The past couple of weeks have seen a bit of ‘out of town’ experiences. And some laziness in updating these pages. Which is why these pages have changed (again). Blogger is being used to update the pages. The previous design was home-grown, but a bit too much trouble to update the way that I wanted. So I am going to use Blogger as the base, then make some design changes and enhancements. Comments are enabled here, but will be monitored.

It’s not that I’ve been lazy in the web site activity. I’ve got a more security-related site called the “Security Dawg” (http://www.securitydawg.com/ ). Much of the security stuff that is here will be updated and moved over to Security Dawg.

Then there’s the “Car Crash” site (http://www.carcrashpix.com/ ). That’s a new experiment with a picture-based web site. The experiences with that site will help with another picture-type site that I’m working on. That site is not quite ready for publication yet. Another experiment in picture-based site was one I put together when there was a big wildfire at Lake Tahoe, CA. It’s called Tahoe WildFire, and is at http://www.tahoewildfire.com/ ). I suspect that one will become more dormant. There are some impressive wildfire pictures there, though.

There’s also a couple of family-type sites. One has pictures, and a discussion forum area. The other is Blogger-based, but is probably going to change to a discussion forum base. They are family-based, so also won’t be published here.

In the meantime, this place (in it’s new Blogger format) will be updated more often that in the last few months. For the next several posts, you’ll get to put up with some “what I did on my summer vacation” type entries here over the next several days. There will be some pictures, so prepared to try to stay awake.

Our (Pam and I) travels started with flying to Houston, TX a couple of weeks ago. We managed to make it through the TSA security theatre. (Did you ever wonder why all of those dangerous liquids are tossed into a single garbage can next to the security lines? If the liquids are so dangerous, wouldn’t there be some Hazardous Material containers nearby?)

Anyhow, a nice visit with Pam’s sister in Katy, TX (a suburb just NW of Houston). The weather was warm, a bit humid, with thunderstorms a bit to the east. We were there for a few days visiting, with a side trip to Galveston.

If you happen to be in Galveston, on the road by the beach, go to a place called “Spot’s”. Great hamburgers there.

The interesting thing about the beach and ocean there is the color of the ocean. It’s very brown, due to the sediment from the Mississippi River to the east. Doesn’t seem to bother the locals, but it is much different than the ocean surf of California.

We were in Houston for 4 days, then left Sunday morning for the ‘road trip’ home. Pam’s sister had a 1999 Camry (V6, lots of extras) that CarMax was going to buy for $3500. Our 1998 Camry has 205K miles, still runs good, but the 1999 had only 120K miles. A few small repairs (timing belt, water pump, full brake job) for only $650, and we’ve got a car that will last a couple of years with minimal maintenance, no car payment, and low insurance cost.

With a GPS in hand (er, car) (I picked up a Mio C220 GPS unit for $179 at Circuit City before we left), we headed off to San Antonio.