Grandbaby Fix complete for the week

Ahhh..... nothing like pretty little Granddaughter time at home. I could go on at length on how knowing your going to have a Grandchild and that little bundle of noises and funny faces can change an outlook. She is super cute and I don't know why her parents say she is loud.. she did a tiny squeal and it was so quiet I have to think my hearing is going. Heh... very sweet little faces. I could also post ninety million pictures here but I won't do that either.

Can't wait to have her up and running around so I can spoil her in front of her parents. Over and over again.

Besides babies it was a general week. Generally interesting and some novel things came up but overall overshadowed by baby time.

Interestingly....

My favorite author Tim Powers's new novel came out. Medusa's Web....I finished it even though I was reading it intentionally slow... It was old / new Hollowoodish and some interesting time travel or out of body transmutation of consciousness. Pretty nifty if not somewhat confusing when things picked up. Tim is very good at drawing you in slowly then setting the hook. I think the only thing that bothered me was the main character's name was Scott. Not that I have a problem with the name but it was used in another book and I kept getting a flash of my own idea of what the first Scott looked like in my head in that book warped over this character... My problem LOL. It was a good ending and a great read. Buy it.. it's worth it.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00WQZG44I?keywords=tim%20powers%20medusas%20web&qid=1454291298&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1

Yeah.. now I am off on a Garrett series novel for fun and then I think I will go re read Declare again.

Declare along with Anubis Gates and favorite On Stranger Tides ( the BOOK not the MOVIE ) are the go to's when you need brain twisters and a hard pound on the back. Thank Tim... Cheers! Boom!

I think I have Fallout 4 settled now.... Or at least as much as I want to so I can ease off the constant game play. Almost every settlement found and those I want settled settled... I wonder how many more times I can say settled.... hahaha... Last done was Spectacle Island.. So much WOOD! I had a good 100 cement block sets before I got there.. that's 12 pieces of wood per... and then I hit the island on a whim and saw that the whole island was open to deconstruction ( most.. I really really hate that I cannot deconstruct the broken and damaged buildings in settlement areas.. You should be able to too )... but what I could scrap brought me up over 300 sections. I stepped away from the island to decide if I wanted to do something there but figured that between the co-op and drive in and it that it was more interesting and in a different section of the map..

So I built a huge rectangular compound as is my wont. With as much as I was carrying around.......... ( 30,000 lbs of stuff ).... I had the ability to build the walls... put up turrets, build housing and genni's, water, crops, guard posts and all before setting up the beacon. I had heard that you had to leave the island and return to get settlers there so I popped out and back.. I had one!!! Alright. Then I ran around visiting all the other settlements as you need to do or they get unhappy then popped back. Now there were four. That was perfect to put one on the crops, one on the collection point and two on guard post. Since I had a bunch of miner helmets with lamps on them I made the executive decision that this whole settlement would wear helmets.... hahahah.. Now there are about sixteen settlers.. all with miner light helmets wandering about. Hilarious!

The other thing I worked on was power armor locating and upgrading. Twenty Two sets of armor. One with a jetpack that kinda works... Who cares.. it was fun.

I started looking for all the bobbleheads last night and have about 8 more to find. I have to revisit places I have been before and missed them that time. As fast as I usually go through places and picking up everything possible I still miss these things... well they hide them too so.... not all my fault...

Here are some screen shots....

Posing in Stealth Armor on the roof of my Red Rocket outpost. Very hard to pose in the right place and right direction and right lighting.



Spectacle Islands Visitor center. Now there are three power poles around the lawn chairs with lighting so even at night there is a festive look. Maybe tomorrow I'll download the shot I took.



Stealth Armor activated. See all the rippling around the rocket... yeah baby! Gotta be crouched. Will be excellent for sniping.



Jet pack installation. Lots of levels and parts to make and I can get a short rocket assisted jump going. Sad.



Bobbleheads!! I walked past this one so many times.. Unbelievable.



Red Rocket outpost. Lighting done and there are even caution flashers on the ceiling of the overhang. Got chairs and table and an armor maintenance rig there. Pretty awesome.. Have not been to my main place in Sanctuary in a while. The wall is 12 by 16 cement sections wide and long and there will be a set of armor of each section when I am done. Have to do some uplighting.


I did download a bunch of shots from today and I did also take a bunch of poster shots of ...well... posters too because they are so very well done. Maybe next week or a mid week update I will post more here... who knows.

I will end up the Fallout 4 section by saying that the game is well worth the money I paid. I really hate to say that the company.. Bethesda could have made a mint on this by DLCing a lot of it... Thanks for not doing that but I hope you come out with a more malleable segment. Xbox One's ability to screen capture in a good quality is also very nice. OneDrive is nice as I can upload to it and then show everyone why I have been hidden in my house for so long.

Time to get back to reality more than ingame... Next Saturday I am hoping to go fly Kiss A Hoy with the the gang out at Rainbow. Have to get the alarm system upgraded in the Truck... Need to buy supplies for tailgating.

On the work side it is going to be interesting in a paperwork way as well as a budget way. Excited to see what we end up with in the end. Hoping that we can get most if not all of our request as we had to show everything this time and that has raised up the amount though in reality we are very close to last years numbers.... Fingers crossed... Yes.. its a lot of extra work but it's also good to make it possible for our Forecasters to work better, fast, longer.. oops.. Six Million Dollar Man flashbacks.

Looking forward.....

Manipulate Babys!

Where to start in all this.

I guess with the next highpoint after a relaxing Monday off... was my Daughter going into labor... a very slow labor.... very slow. Baby girl was doing okay but a little premature... Doctors that were smart and since the were in for a check up the grabbed them there and flung them in the labor part of the hospital without anything. So on and off "now is the time" and driving back and forth and back.. and forth until a very late / almost morning delivery of a cute little girl. Can't beat that. Since Fallout 4 has been the thing to do instead of editing pictures,, videos.... bathing.... hah.. No.. can't stand that.. Bathing was a must... but the constant whine of settlers overroad that...



Sooooo..... Yeah...

It's been a week of babies and driving.. I don't care cause this baby is super cute. Lots of pictures but not great ones.... just memento ones... Clear and staged can come up later.

Work has been good and full of numbers and things... I like it. Frustrating things and all... its all good. A delay for the start of this week due to someone smashing in my truck window, a broken toothed son and Baby time... the Bay is erasing all the unhappy thoughts about beating up idiots who break windows and make me waste money fixing it. I hate that part the most. That I have to waste time and money to fix something probably spending more than the *sshole got out of the truck. I never keep expensive stuff in the truck but those little things add up... and now I have to figure out what they were and how much it was all worth.... but I have a beautiful Grandbaby so I will just deal with it and move on. It delays my work week and I don't like that. I would much rather be at my desk running numbers and filing paperwork... Sigh

The other thing that has been neglected is flying the balloon.. any balloon. Not that I have had much want to go out in the cold and do it but its time to break the lazy schedule and get out there. If I can get the trailer out of the back yard. Hopefully all will smooth out and I can think about flying.

Because I took them and thought they were funny I will post some more Fallout shots cause I can.

Since the power armor is stacking up decided to build a bastion at the Red Rocket station. Since I already had an outpost it was easy to make it. Nice backlighting.


A nice nod to Edgar Allen Poe. The Bethesda people are funny and interesting.


I decided to upgrade Sanctuary last of all the settlements as it has only been raided once. Started by lighting up this huge tree then installing lights in the houses. Added two water purifiers and started the cement break wall around the place. Not an easy job as the bushes and other stupid items attached to the ground refuse to let you lay the stones nicely.



I did not shoot and mount these cows. They decided to use the fourth and fifth dimensions to drink from the watering trough. I have found cows in everyplace you can thing to find one.


THree of the lighted houses. Next will be to put more furniture in and then run streetlights. Last will be to move the main outpost over by that house on the left and nearer the workbench.


The Captain. Ran across this guy in the middle of the bay. A hoot. Told ya there was some odd humor at this game company.


Ah well.... if the game goes as it has it will hit me with multiple settlements in trouble as soon as I log in again... Its pretty irritating. I did clear the mirelurks out of the castle and set it up with power, water, walls, food..>THEN went and got the Minutemen... which was funny because all the things piled up as soon as they showed up on site.

Okay.. Hopefully less with the Fallout and more with the real world next weekend.

Enjoy your week while I try and enjoy mine...

Wood! Fallout 4 style

Its a constant....

What a week.... I wont go into the work side as its mostly paperwork, people, heat and consternation.

The main thing that was really a side thing but a thing was chasing down photographs of one of my friends and retiring lucky guy at work. I thought I had all of the office work work shots labeled but it seems that when I had only taken a few shots of work related stuff I wouldn't download it until the next time I really "took pictures". That is making it very hard. I have gone through my files three times already and have to go through one more time to find them and reorganize them. Lots of movie clips too. Two of which I pushed to facebook... They were cool.



Went to a office outing  ( not mine ) and mini office shower for my Daughter and two other pregnant people and bowling as well. Novel. They had some designer cupcakes that looked amazing.. I heard they were very good ( tasting ) too. I didn't take one as I kept thinking that there needed to be enough for the people of the company and I was just there to say hi. It is an Architectural company.. Somewhere I might have been as an architect if I had not let impatience and irritation at a State and ducting get to me. I think my choice was good if not exactly what I wanted to do, I am doing something pretty interesting. Thoughts.

So it was at a bowling alley.. and there was this throwback gaming console... too bad I didn't have time to play the games but I could on my computer but without the same feel I guess.. Never mind.. Passing interest.

One shot of the cupcakes....



I took some shots for my Daughters office web site. She is on the standby list for popping this kid out so I am sitting and waiting. Not that I will be in there... but when the wife says get me there.. I will drive her..... better than her driving over people to get there.

Nothing really major after work hours... mostly playing Fallout 4. Not sure where the tipping point in this game is going to be. Its a lot of fun and building secure ( hah ) settlements has filled hours. Cant be perfectly secure since the game pops raider of one kind or another into the middle regardless of walls... very high walls.. or just behind the scenes where you don't even have a chance to try and help fight them off. I was very irritated with that happening. Its cheating.



Silliness above. After ringing my settlements in wood and steel walls I went back to almost all and surrounded them with huge cement walls with steel walls on top. Hoping this would stop the raiders getting in. It slows them down except one place where every time I visit there are two or three inside getting blown away by my ring of gun turrets. Silly raiders. Stupid game. Above was in the middle of a rebuild. People were sleeping in the beds so I could not move them until they left... that first step was a doozy.



I hate that you cant repair houses that exist and nor can you remove them.. It bugged me to no end that this house that had a father and two children living in it were in fact sleeping under a gaping hole in the roof. So I built the settlers housing above it. It has a causeway to the back along the rear wall. Its three cement blocks high in the rear now but I am probably going to run another course because there is another flipping hill behind it. Hard to stop raiders shooting down into the settlement. They even have lighting and nice couches with carpets in there... I have to fix the main wall first as it has been messed up by the game...



This is the Slog. Now fully ringed with cement and topped with steel walls. Many many gun turrets as there is a Deathclaw nearby and foolish idiots. I may go back later and add another run of cement wall.



Another zone with an un-fixable house. Taken from the lighthouse you can see the walls. They are not a nice square as the game will not let you build over, on, or through stuff you cant move. Stupid again. See that tree... I had to base every part of the wall on how one cement section fit to it. Took four times running that course to get it perfect and to fit. Probably going to run another course of cement on it too.



One of the first places I visited and brought over to the minutemen ( Abernathy ). I did this one almost last of the rebuilds. Now it is two courses of cement and ringed with steel. Added a complete massive housing unit on the top level to make it more comfortable of these not real people. If only rebuilding was so easy in the real world. Or as able to sell scrap for materials. Or if your back was not prone to freaking out carrying heavy loads.



In the bottom of the insane asylum in the game ( really..In The Game )... and you get these guys going off.. Lighted eyes flashing and ching ching ching of their little cymbals.. freaky as all get out. No real crazy peoples, just hopped up raiders.

Glad its done.

I have a list of places I have to fix or build correctly or adjust or replant .. Like I said.. Love if you could do it so easy in reality. I have a back yard that needs scraping flat and re-rocking.... Going to take a three day weekend and a good bobcat to do it right here soon.... soonish...

The problem there is the grading around the house was screwed up by the last owner. In three places the water drains toward not away from the house. One I have fixed and another I have created a trench to move the water away but the third still has a tendency to back up ( not bad and not into the house.. Just onto the cement ) ( It bugs me ) onto the patio so it has to be done right.. which means bobcat and knocking down retaining walls and filling in a crappy built pond. It might be easier to sell and move. Probably.

Here is what I would like to get hold of if I ever have a spare bit of green stuff to fling at it... It would be very nice not to have to try and hurt myself loading and unloading my basket and envelope.



Granted I have a trailer and it should never need to be removed except to fly but I do like to clean the basket and wash it down and keep the wicker healthy as possible.... Maybe..

So since I have been having fun with the new Fallout I have not been doing much else. It takes a lot of time to get things done in it and there is always someone needing a rescue.. sigh. I stopped tonight because after doing two back to back rescues with a couple of side attacks and I just about had enough supplies to start building and they threw another side rescue in and I was too tired of dealing with them. So a good break and reading and perhaps tomorrow I can get a few things done in the garage if its nice enough. If not.. I have many photographs to deal with and find some videos and such.... Lots to do... time has been wasted .. fun and no.. I don't really regret the time.. No Ragrats!

I might put a few hours in the game tomorrow just to get 100 sets of cement sections.. that would be cool.

I can do Summuerish now.

Yeah... I'm not sure its the darkness that sucks or the edgey chill that is constant that I am tired of. I know in the middle of summer when its 97 out I will be whining about the heat but heck... I really do like the sunlight. What if we did one month of summer then one month of winter?



Okay...ah.... two and two? Perpetual 72 degree would suck.. how bout between 50 and 80? Come on!

Blah.

This was the first full week of work after the holidays. It was tough. Five full days in the row was not really the problem..it was the problem of other people still on vacation that caused lots of delays. More delays in the future. My regular gripe of not enough information or incorrect information or vague information has continued into the new year. What would I have hoped is that clear and concise directions were delivered instead of documents that only go to confuse the subject instead of illuminate it. Go ahead and complain.. You will be told you need to figure it out. No.. That is not the deal. Email takes a lot of time of my day.. lots.

A few more shots of the trip to Clines Corners... I was trying to get some shots of billboards but we were moving too fast and the angle cause too much bokeh to the shot. But the idea is there...and some polars came out but they are not that good.

Lets hope people read and heed instead of read and repeat. Track record so far...not so good.


The attack of the Clines Corners signs....


Count them as we go....One..two...free fowa..


This turned out the way I wanted it too..... Could be brighter...the focus is very nice....


Fallout 4 portions...

I was in Imgur last night and someone posted a fuzzy shot and said... go to this tower in the North East sector.. go to the top and flip the breaker and watch what happens... What happens.. It let out two big Deathclaws that decided to attack the local legendary raiders below.. funny.. But more raiders showed up after. Loved this shot.. great angle.

Carrying too much and can't run.. that is always the problem... I am walking with cement buckets on my feet all the time.... makes defending or trying to foil attacks very hard...

Oberland Station rebuilt with cement walls and turrets... very large settlement housing. Not completely done. The build zone is on a hill... so very easy to work with.. Uh...NOT.

Traders crossing paths...With Rabbits on the side... First time I saw it.... I sadly have traders going everywhere, every which way, and they show up in packs that unfortunately draw attacks like crazy.

Greentop Nursery..  almost perfect but where the house is ( I am standing on at this point ) I cant set cement blocks so its walled in back. Its working so far. Attacks always come from the right side of this screenshot so there are twenty gun turrets on that wall alone. Stupid synths. The kink in the wall is due to an overhanging tree branch I can set a cement block near.

Nordlinger Beach rebuilt. Massive area to cover and I didn't use it all. The biggest problem is that some of the items that are on the ground cause you to be unable to set walls down and you have to work around it.. it's a big pain. Right after I finished this it was attacked at the same time as another settlement... One raider blew up 8 guns and three plants.. How I have no clue how...and the plants and half the guns healed themselves... . I put more walls up.

 Kingsport Lighthouse. From the lighthouse.. which is nice. Its a temp wall. I have to figure out how to set it with all the damn ground trash problems.

The Slog. Resort run by strange people. Wood metal walls for the most part. No time and supplies to cement wall it yet. Nice and comfy though. Lots of guns.

Outpost Zimonja... The place Raiders go to die. Since the game zaps them into the middle of the settlement even with four block high walls I felt no compunction to not ringing that area with gun turrets... Raiders last about five seconds. Stupid game.

Hangman's Alley. Stupid place. Its an alley and there is a settlement in it. Freakin hard to secure. More cement blocks. Many. Had to go two levels on the housing to fit all the idiots who want to live there. Guns everywhere because the game zaps raiders in wherever.

The Silly places and poses the game makers create with the teddy bears... I wished I had started taking screenshots of the game earlier. It's sitting on a hot plate.

I think I get more frustrated with trying to lay down walls then I do with the silly goules that jump into your face all the time. People have said that they have finished the main story and gotten bored with the game. I have not. I've stopped chasing the main story line and have been spending most of my time between farming.. building up settlements and the odd quest on the side. So far two new places and one found place. It's better than running the streets and getting picked up for loitering at street corners.

I will probably play it through this time and then try it a different way next time.. in a year or two. Hopefully there will be some DLCs on this one. It would be cool if they did some expansion packs with more areas to build on... but I'm still just making walls. Big .. Thick.. Huge... WALLS!

Maybe next weekend I will feel up to going ballooning. Still in a funk about it all. Bad thing to get into and hard to get out of.

Oh.. and I could be watching football but I don't watch football.... Well a bit for background sound.

I have no clue who is where in the standing and what or when the Superbowl is.

Frosty and refusals to budge from my house.

I cannot and will not leave the somewhat warm place in my house! Okay I am going to work .. where its pretty toasty which is fine... even with having to step outside the garage and get in a cold truck. It usually is warming up about 7 minutes down the road. But go out voluntarily.. heh!

I did get the garage door sealed. It has been leaking air for a while. The edging on it had come away slightly from the frame by the door banging into it. I screwed it in and then added a nice rubber seal all around. Its tight and sealed well. A bit hard to close and you cant just fling it closed now. Its working much nicer with two days past. Not that the garage... which is finished and insulated is super cold.. It does have two vents in the wall though so its not "sealed". Next on the garage list is outer seal on the sides and the bottom door seal. Plus I have to relocate bins and put up the spare mattresses... That will need rope and verification that my hooks are still in the wall. It also needs to be warmer. I was planning on doing it today but got told off. No problem.

I did also go buy two more 50 ft hoses so I could fill my pond from the garage deep sink... I did that yesterday while it was above 40 degrees outside. I had to thaw the original hose at it had frozen water in it and the back spigot was getting spitty. I have covered the spigot with a cover so I hope it will stay normal until this summer. So..  yes... the pond is filled and good. The pond is nice and scummy for the fish to stay warm in. Now all three hoses are emptied and rolled up in the garage.

I did I did I did.... while waiting for the pond to fill redo the old front flower garden cover. I had asked these people.. paid them well too to clear it of weeds and a bush then cover it with ground covering. The got rid of the weeds and bush but did this thin little strip in the middle of covering cloth. So I removed the few rocks they had put on it to keep it from blowing away and cut two more lengths and covered it correctly and even tucked it under the existing plastic then laid pavers nicely on it until I can order up a ton of Santa Fe red rock to cover it.

In all.. If you want it done correctly you have to do it yourself.. or direct it done. No more of this.. Here is a list.. go to it.. and then they bugger off before you can point out their mistakes or corrects to make. Nope.

I got a lot done over this last three day break. Could have been more... Oh well.

Here are a few crops of pictures I took on the drive out to Clines Corners and back. I have loaded a nice portfolio of all of the good ones if your interested... I have more in there that I touch on but I am saving them for another day.

http://InvisibleBlack.zenfolio.com/p819443459/e6e742fb3

The original shot of the top crop. Through the frozen trees.


The whole Albuquerque valley was covered in fog. Could not see the city nor the other side of town.. but as we hit the highway it broke up.


Eastward Hoooooo....... What was strange on this shot.. hahahahaha....


We tried to drive up the road with the truck in 4 wheel drive ( duallies in back ) yeah....we skated over the snow and slid to a stop... Not happening.



A nice crop of of a truck in repose on the side of the road. Most big trucks shrug off the cold and snow and move along.. this one... well I think it was sleeping.


On the Fallout 4 scene... sigh... After having two settlements invaded by synths in large numbers.. seven to nine at a time and the game not resetting correctly and it getting worse and worse and then more raider of gunners, raiders, and mutants... I was wondering if all the trade routes I had put out was causing the insane amount of raids going on. There is no easy way to stop a trade route and now that I understand the way they can be set up I could have done it much better. I do have some seriously chillen power armor now.. and all the scrounging I have done has given me a nice load of pieces and parts to mod with.. Now to up my science and build trees to upgrade more. Learned also that walls wont keep raiders out as the game will spawn them inside.. Only gun turrets will help that so now I have as many gun turrets pointing in as I do out of a settlement. Next is to shield the planting field and gennies and water sources. Too much to do and I am a bit sick of it right now.

I have a bunch more photographs to upload to the web site after I edit them and also the Cloudbouncer is waiting for more info so I can complete it.. I have already gotten my list of things I want to complete at work and some training to do done...... But I have to remember to get home at a reasonable time to get stuff done there. Back to the regular work week after all these back to back holidays.

Hope your holidays went well and you are looking at the next year with a positive outlook. I am trying.... I am wishing for summer.. even though I know when its here and bleeping hot out that I will want it cold... Are there any locations where its mild all the time?

Gotta get out and take more pictures.. must edit on my favorite wall hangings so I can get them out to sell.. so many things to do but not in the mood for any of it.

Stupid brain.

PS.. Carolyn.. All the Kiffles are gone already... GONE!