The Steussy Ranch

We made a trip to the hospital this morning, but it was a false alarm. Consider it a dry run for when the baby really comes. Dan-dan, Camilla and Lumpy enjoyed the excursion, however.

It was a good football week, if I do say so myself. I didn’t win a single week last year, and it feels good to share the top of the heap with Ashley on the second week of the season. And I have the number one average of all of us. Go me!

Gabi is still pregnant. She fully expected to give birth before now, figuring that with the third full term pregnancy she’d be a bit early. We’re getting much closer to the due date (September 30) than she ever expected.

Kids are being cute. Now that summer has broken and days are cool enough to go out again, they are playing in the yard. Camilla is throwing a ball for Pappy to chase. Dan-dan is playing with trains and cars and trucks, creating incredibly complicated tracks for Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends to navigate.

Dad is being very busy. Lots of orders from all of the clients, and all of them being handled very well. This is the busiest I have been since opening Apogee Communications and it feels good. I’ve still managed to get into the gazebo every day for a few minutes of reading with Gabi and watching the kids. It’s good, domestic fun.

Costco’s TV repair (see here) is not going very well. It seems they rely on local contractors to do the repairs, and the one in Temecula is not picking up his phone. Things are looking bad for next weekend’s football games.

Last night, when turning on the TV to watch the news, we heard a small “pop” and it went completely dead. Dang. Just before the start of football for the week.

Our Proview 32″ LCD TV hasn’t been completely without trouble. It was clearly a low-cost, China produced TV when we bought it. Its had problems with ghosting screens and inability to handle shades of black. Those are quibbles, of course; in general it provides very nice high definition viewing.

Imagine my surprise when I find out that Costco offers a two year warranty on all of the TV’s it sells. And we’ve had this TV for exactly 23 months! Repair crew coming on Monday or Tuesday.

So, football today is on the old fuzzy screen. The fuzzy screen didn’t hurt Peyton Manning too much, but it did cause the game with Tennessee to be quite close at the every end.

Ashley and I are tied for the lead in the football pool, but we both have weak high point choices later today. She has the NY Jets with 13 points against Baltimore. I have San Diego with 10 points against New England. Go Chargers!

Gabi’s belly is definitely lower today than yesterday. Not sure what this means regarding the proximity of birth, but we’ve called Natalie and Brandon (who’ve offered to look after Dan-dan and Camilla) to ask what they are doing tomorrow. Will keep all updated.

I simply had to post this video review. System Shock 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, and I’d heard that Bioshock was its “spiritual successor”. From the review, it sounds more like an updated copy. But, if you play videogames, please see the review. It’s very funny.

RICH WINS!!!

There were certainly some interesting games to be seen. You had to enjoy the victory the Colts had over New Orleans on opening day. San Diego’s victory over the Bears was also quite fine. Some were not so good, though. In particular, the last game between Arizona and San Francisco. How many penalties were there??? Was this a hockey game???

I can’t promise to have this up every week, given my responsibilities over the coming months, but I will try for the moment. And I do have the first week up. Please do make corrections by leaving a comment.

Feeling better this morning. Still a little woozy and light-headed, but not like yesterday.

It looks like a fight between Rich and Dad in the football pool. I’d be there too, but Oakland allowed Detroit to walk all over them after a very close game for 3 quarters. The pool will be decided by the Cincinnati / Baltimore game this afternoon.

On another topic entirely, I’ve been investigating the steps that need to happen prior to renting the house. 15 years ago, I had a terrible experience with a real estate agent who “tried” to rent out my condo in Coronado. He rented it exactly once in the year and a half he was on the job. One thing, I knew I wanted to do my own website on the house since a neighbor had great success selling his house with a simple one which had a series of photos.

Anyway, my investigation was very, very short. All I did was google “Temecula rental houses”, and Google has a complete listing of rentals on a map. There are 20 of them, culled from various professional real estate sites, but anyone can post on Google’s board. They do the same thing for sales (300 in the area) and foreclosures (600 in the area). Ever notice that real estate agents don’t post available Internet connection speeds and prices, the single most important real estate consideration these days? It’s an ingrained hatred of the Internet, which they know for certain will eventually steal their jobs.

Aside: one of the reasons we bought in Temecula is that NO ONE could give me a straight answer on any property we looked at IF there was high speed internet, who the provider is, how fast it is, and how much it would cost. Not even the providers of the services were 100% certain. I figured Temecula was the safest bet, since I’d been able to sample high-speed Wi-Fi less than a mile away at the local mall and it was the most established community in the region. In the end, it was a good choice. We have Verizon FiOS, which is the fastest consumer connection available in the US.