Driving day.........

Today was a big driving day as I loaded up the Black scooter and took it to the Lake Cabin....  We needed to go down there and check things out, and hadn't found time to get it done yet....  

And it doesn't look like we will be there now until Mother's day, so now it doesn't matter...  Everything there was just like we left it last fall....  There aren't many folks around down there in the winter, but we are lucky as we have a family that lives full time next door...  So anything way out of line will get reported.....

I left the bike in the garage and walked the house running water in all the drains...   And we won't need any heat any more, so I secured that as well....

The trip home was faster as the trailer was now empty and pulled better...  It was 87 degrees down there on the truck temperature gauge...  Warmer than we had here during the afternoon...

Missouri is now becoming green as the leaves are budded out and the grass is high enough to mow.... In fact my neighbor was out on the rider knocking down the tall weeds along the mail boxes....

It was almost 9 PM when I arrived back here at the house.. The trailer and the car are still out in the street...   Usually I do not do the storage lot after dark....

Retired Rod

Varooom vum vum, Varooom, vum vum..... a clogged jet again....

Loyce was up with the grand kids at the crack of dawn...  Biscuit could hear them talking and began to whine to go be with them....  I put more pillows over my head....

They had breakfast over before I ever came out of hiding...  But we did end up outside mid morning as it was becoming a really nice day for once...

I started to work on the lawn with the battery powered string trimmer....  And then I was on the motorcycles to go get some gas...   I rode the scooter around some of the longer blocks to get it warmed up as it hadn't been run all week...

That was when the grandkids parents arrived to collect the monsters.....  They were in the basement watching Monsters Inc..  After all of the monsters left, I was after the yard again....

We have an older Lawnboy mower that is two cycle... you have to mix oil in its gas....  And it has had a semi clogged jet for the last couple of years...  So again today, I took the jet out of the carburetor and tried to clean it....  Compressed air and soaking it in chemical...   It never works..  The little pin hole is soooo small that I have nothing to force thru it...



I kept on trying different fine wires and needles...  all too big...  Finally I found a piece of stranded copper wire, and cut off one of the little individual strands...  After straightening it with the needle nose pliers, I was able to push it thru the tiny jet....  Adding solvent as I pushed it thru again and again...

This picture is a Honda Jet, but it is almost the same as the Lawnboy..  But they won't interchange..

After the mower carb was reassembled, the mower ran like a new watch...!  Yea!  Lawnboy mowers aren't made any more, and I have no idea where to go buy a new jet...  So that fairly well saved me from having to go buy a new mower...

After the yard was done, it was time to ride out into the country on the big adult sized Honda...

Retired Rod

Two versions of Chrome under W8.... Who knew?

Another thing learned today about Windows 8 and running Chrome on this Operating System...

As most of you are aware, you can run your programs and apps from either the Start Screen or the classic Desktop screen....  But what I didn't know, was that Chrome has a version for the Start Screen and a more classic version for the desktop..

Changing the screen that starts the program does not change which version you are looking at however.....   You either have one or the other installed and that is the one that starts from either place...

But you can toggle back and forth from the App version to the Desktop version with the little setup options button up in the top right of the screen..  The button with the three lines horizontally across it...

On the settings menu that appears after the button is pressed, you find a selection a few lines from the top that says "Relaunch Chrome on the Desktop"  Clicking on this will launch the classic version of Chrome where you have the three buttons back in the upper right to Close, Drop to a window or Minimize....  Also your task bar should re appear across the bottom...

Opening the settings menu from this Desktop mode, will offer "Relaunch Chrome in Windows8 Mode"  which will take you back to the App desktop where your classic upper right buttons are gone, and so is the task bar....  Assuming you will return to the Start menu to move on to further Apps.... This is the cleanest screen, but takes more time to get around and used to.

So run Chrome in App mode or run it in Desktop mode......... Or like I have been doing tonight, switch back and forth... You won't loose your work...

We have had four of the five grand kids over here tonight, for a slumber party...  The oldest boy opted out...  But we all went to Red Robin for burgers and a balloon......  I have ketchup smeared from ear to ear and all over the sleeves of my sweat shirt.......  The kids had two adult chocolate ice cream cake servings, with four spoons...   My son Ben said it was like "hyenas  around a fresh kill!!" Both plates were polished clean, when they were done...  I kind of cringed when he said that, but then laughed my butt off........

As I reported last night, I tried the Start 8 Program to add a Start Button onto the W8 desktop task bar..  I have been using it all day today, and while it doesn't have all the advantages it had in W7, it is close enough that I am not going to take it out.....   So if you are running W8 and want that start button back, you can have it by installing    Start8  ..

I put this here again tonight, as I had very few hits again on the blog yesterday....  Computer tech info and motorcycles means no interest in the blogs........

Retired Rod

Computers and motorcycles......

It would seem that no one is much interested in our old man's luncheons on the motorcycles as we had fewer hits on the blog than the day with the technical computer stuff.....  I just looked and we have only had 65 readers since it was posted last night....

And that was from all sources including Google Plus...   I'm certain that nothing that really happens here is all that interesting, but I do enjoy going out and about on the motorcycle...  The city part on the in town freeways isn't all that fun...  And yesterday we had a bunch of Brown delivery trucks out on the roads....  Being intermingled with them at 65 mph in close quarters is more scary than fun...

But the ride thru the countryside with not too many folks around you, or on the old deserted almost abandoned road next to the riverbank along the stately Missouri river conjures up visions of Huck Finn...  I wouldn't trade it for the world...

Perhaps spending time late at night with photos and writing the story is not in my best interest...  who knows....?

But just as Thursday was sunny and beautiful, today turned back overcast rainy and cold...  We never made the mid 50s all day....  Its in the 40s now...  I spent the day with the computers again..

I installed the programs that I use to sniff out wifi connections....  I used to use this all the time when we were camping, as we had various campgound  hot spots and it would tell me if they were secure and needed a password...  But now days seems like almost everyone uses security and open connections are a thing of the past....  So I probably wouldn't need that anymore...

Its a windows 7 program called Vistumbler...   And it did install, but I had to go back to the classic desktop to agree to the EULA and push the buttons to answer their questions.   But after that, it didn't put an icon on any of the menus...    So it was installed but I couldn't find it to start it...

I had to search the entire C:\ drive to find the dot exe file...    Once I found it, a right click allowed me to pin the file to the start screen...  I can see where folks that were not completely at home with windows and how it works, would be in fairly big trouble right off of the bat....

Perhaps Windows 8.1 can't come fast enough....  This is called Windows Blue, which is probably a project name rather than an official title...  It is rumored that Blue will put back our revered Start Button.......  as users aren't exactly enamored with its demise....  The start button has been around since it was introduced in windows 95..   So it has been common since then...  The people at Microsoft thought that folks were pinning their applications to the task bar, rather than using the start button, but evidently we don't know what we are missing until its gone....

Even though the start button might return, rumors have it that it may not be as powerful as it was in windows7...  And aftermarket programmers are making some plugin utilities to fill in the gap....  I have had start 8 recommended to me, but haven't done that research yet....

There I go again, talking about motorcycles and computers....... well that fairly much so sums up my life here in cold Kansas....

I wrote this a while ago, but since then I downloaded Start 8 and installed it on the first button of the task bar on the traditional W8 desktop........  Do it!!!!  Its just like old times are back..................!!!!!

Retired Rod