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Heh, as if I had so much to crow about anyway. Balty Pride was actually rather nice, a lot smaller than previous years. This marked the first time that the Chesapeake Bay Bears and the DC Bear Club would join forces and march together. Turns out no one marched, they instead piled into the bed of a pickup and rode the half mile parade route. As it stands, they didnt even fill the pickup bed. A lot of the same cliched gay stuff as every year. The real fun was the block party, which had spread out a bit this year. I saw friends, coworkers, etc. as I usually do. Nice weather just to get out of the house and do something different.

I installed a Sirius satellite radio in Jeff's truck since he expressed an interest. I have not had much of a chance to explore it, but the sound quality rivals local FM broadcasts, and is a nice escape from the formulaic Clear Channel corporate crapola that pollutes the airwaves these days masquerading as 'programming' and 'content'. If I like it, I will get a similar system for myself.

Stuff currently making the rounds in CD players/computers/iPod here: Marillion's Marbles (excellent), Velvet Revolver's Contraband (better than I expected), Joe Satriani's Is There Love In Space? (not his best effort, but not the worst either), ZZ Top's Rhythmeen (nice, meaty and crunchy), Richard Ashcroft's Human Conditions (great mood music for lonely highway driving) plus an endless pile of downloaded mp3s.

Mom's appetite is returning a bit more and she's trying to be more active when she is able. She was hoping to be in better shape than she is currently, however. I have a good portion of the veggie garden under control where she can get her hands dirty doing what she loves. Gardening is her therapy.

Garage to-dos: Replace the entry door on the building. Replace the condensor, H-valve and receiver/dryer on the truck a/c and recharge it. Rebuild the small generator. Rebuild the small Troybilt tiller. Haul a bunch of stuff to the scrap yard and 30 gallons of used oil to recycler. Minor work and upgrades to the camper. Get a TIG welder. Install gauges, pulley and intake on the Mini. Fix two mowers and the chipper/shredder.

I added a half terabyte of firewire drives to the server in an effort to keep some backups more secure. When funds are more available I plan on throwing together a file/media server with RAID 1 redundant storage to park on the LAN. It wont be a bleeding edge machine, instead it will be purpose-built for securing backups and storing multimedia files. It will have plenty of RAM and gigabit ethernet, but no kickass video or processors. Just lots of bandwidth and connectivity.

That's it for now, I dont want to bore my readership!