With the vacancy at our house in our heart, I started looking for a new puppy.  I became mesmerized by the beauty of White Golden Retrievers.  I finally found they are called English Retrievers.  After searching all over on the web, I found some breeders within driving distance.  After emailing a dozen breeders and calling 5, I only got a total of 3 responses back.  I was really surprised.  I got in touch with a Gwen Logan at Logan Hill Farm in northern Ohio.  She has a beautiful dame:  Toni Blair

Blair had 12 puppies on August 17.  She had 8 girls and 4 boys. 

They were all white and absolutely beautiful.  They were the calmest puppies that you have would ever seen.  When we visited the farm, we had a hard time saying no.  We placed a deposit and should be getting our new addition in the next 7 to 10 days.  We are very excited!

Hanna

July 4, 1998 - August 20, 2007

After 9 wonderful years, my dog Hanna has passed away.  She has been struggling with cancer for 6 months.  She was doing very well, and then she got an infection in her leg.  We took her to the vet, and he tried his best but there was nothing that we could do for her.  After one of the hardest decisions that we have ever had, we put her down on Monday, August 20.  Our entire family went to the vet and visited her one last time.  We said our goodbyes and thanked her for being a part of our family.  It was very emotional and somehow peaceful at the same time.

It has very hard to talk about her in the last month.  It has very lonely and we really miss her.  Here are some the pictures showing how Hanna has always been a part of our family.  She was the best dog.  She was always patient and tolerant.  She took all of the abuse that our children could dish out--evident by the gray hair in her face.  Yet, always return her love to us.  She rarely barked but was always very vigilant, protecting her family.

Once again, my car got rear-ended.  This is second time I will have replaced my bumper.

I happened to be a at red light for a minute and the lady behind me ran into me.  She claimed that her sandals slipped off of the brake and then on the gas.  They were pretty thick sandals.  That is why I think it was a wardrobe malfunction.  She was nice about it and no hard feelings. 

Her mother works at Jeff Wyler's body shop and she suggested them again to me.  They put on the last bumper and did not do a very good paint match (see photo to the left).  Everyone thinks I am crazy and reminds me that I am color blind.  I really don't think I'll go back there.  I am almost tempted to go to an actual Toyota dealership.  Maybe, they will get the color right.

My previous accident, in contrast, happened on the expressway going 65 MPH in rush hour traffic.  A lady ram another guy's car into my bumper.  That was a little more dramatic.  The lady claimed that her car was pushed, as well, and she was a victim.  It was pretty obvious what actually happened with the 3 cars by examining the damage.  Mine in the rear, her's in the front, and the other man's car with damage to both bumper.  She started to argue with the highway patrol officer.  In fact, she called up her mother to come help her argue her case.  Regardless, her insurance company paid for my new mismatched bumper.

After my son took an interest in riding, my daughter did not want to be left out.

She wasn't quite as fast, but she learned it pretty quick.  After a few spills, our neighbor suggested learning to ride a slight grassy slope behind her house.

After a few runs, she had the confidence to hit the street again the next day.

What I find amazing is how different my two kids are.  My son learned to ride his bike 2 1/2 years (by age) before his older sister.  But in contrast, my daughter was dressing herself (multiple times per day) a few years before my son did.  To prove my point, my daughter's first comment when she got her tricycle was that it matched her red dress.  Watch the video.

Saturday, my 4 year old son decided he wanted to take the training wheels off of his bike.  He has always been interested in riding bikes.  He picks it up quickly. 

He was confident.

We started out with some success:

And few spills...

But he mastered it very quickly.

It is definitely one of most special moments as a dad.

My dog Hanna celebrates her 9th birthday today.  This is a big deal...considering.  Back in February, she started to limp pretty bad, favoring her front left leg.  The doctors diagnosed her with bone cancer.  They said that they could amputate but not sure if that would extend her life.  They gave her 6 weeks to live or so.  It has been 4 1/2 months.   She has good days and bad days.  But we are having more good right now.

When trying to install my Visioneer 9120 Scanner, I got this weird error:

Running Vista, I have installed the Canon provided RAW codec for CR2 format.  It allows you view those files natively. 

I was browsing through a folder of pictures.  I noticed that it got slower and slower as I went through the pages.  Eventually, it gave me an out of memory error.  I didn't have anything else open.  I brought up Task Manager and saw that I had memory left.  I closed the picture viewer and just watched the memory get reclaimed in about 20 seconds.  The total delta there is about 1.5 gig.

I tried to import pictures for the first time in Lightroom on my new Vista machine.

I kept on getting the mysterious:

"Problem with Importing Files - the file was not imported. Could not copy a file to the requested location."

At first I thought it was my card reader.  I got a brand new, built in one.  But I was able to read the files directly.  So I tried copying the files to my desktop and importing them from there.  I got the same error.

I double checked the file permissions of the target and they were all fine.  I also tried not applying any Metadata templates or "Rendering Standard-Sized Previews."   Same result.

Normally, I organize the imported pictures with the following options:

I went ahead and changed to:

surprisingly that worked! However, that is frustrating because I like to auto create a separate folder for each day based upon date taken.

After looking around on Adobe's website, I found the following:

http://www.adobe.com/go/kb401508

If the By Date path you select for your folder in the Import Photos dialog box contains a forward slash, then your photos are not imported.

So it is a Lightroom bug with Vista.  I changed the option to:

That will work fine.  I can then rearrange after import.  I really want an option that makes it YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD/.  For now, I will manually create that structure. 

One thing that is weird:  this is one of the few "template" things that you cannot edit in the application settings folder for Lightroom.

The other day my wife had a tire blowout.  She doesn't think she hit anything.  Nonetheless, it was a loud "explosion."  Fortunately, she was only driving about 40 MPH and could immediately pull over.  As you can see below, a huge 4" gash was in the sidewall.

Last night I ordered a new computer.  I haven't upgraded for several years...it was time.

I ordered it from NewEgg.com and paid for it with Discover Card.  They have this feature called Secured Online Account Numbers.  It is pretty nice.  You log in and get new credit card number for each vendor that you pay online.  That number is only good at the vendor.  I did that last night.  This morning, I tried to use my card and it got rejected/flagged.  I also got an email and phone call from Discover.  I called them up and told them that I really did buy that computer.  Some people might find this annoying or irritating.  I think it is a good service.  I would rather this happened and error on the conservative.

Here is picture that my daughter drew: