A Day (or Two) in the Life of Scott Hanno

Not too much to report on this end, the winds were whipping up a storm yesterday with gusts up to 50 mph but I don't think that it got quite that bad, plus it was raining and cold and a pretty crappy kind of day. But today sure was nice, got the lawn mowed and mulched up all of the leaves and it's still looking mighty green out there. I had my one month follow up eye doctors appointment yesterday and that went fine, not my next one is in three months and all is holding together just great.

I also took Thursday off and had wall to wall carpet installed in the upstairs to replace the white carpet that I knew I'd have to do someday when I bought the place. But Montie sped up the process and in his final days left a few spots that I couldn't get rid of. I've been looking at carpet the past few months and finally called Empire Today who came out Tuesday night for an estimate. And they work quick and could have installed it the next day but I needed to ask about a day off and Thursday worked out well and they showed up first thing that morning. It took them about four or five hours to totally rip up the old and put down the new and they did a great job with the installation and it turned out just great. But I'm not sure that I entirely like the color that I picked out, I think that it's just different right now and hopefully I will get used to it some day. And I'm not sure if it goes quite as well with my blue bedroom as it does with the rest of the house so I might have to look at painting that a different color some day.

I updated my browser to IE 7.0 and it's working fairly well, I've installed it like five times before but always rolled it back as there were things that I didn't like with it but I guess that I must be adjusting. And I was eating at Subway yesterday and I found these chips that were fat free and tasted great - they were made with Olean which I guess is some new product that Frito Lay has started using. So now I can eat chips again, I gave them up due to the amount of fat that are in them and they even make Doritos and they are fat free as well, it's pretty amazing and they taste just like the regular ones. Try 'em out if you haven't all ready and I think that you'll really like them.

I guess that's about it though, it was great getting an extra hours sleep this morning but that just means that it will be dark at 5pm and I'll be driving to and from work in the dark - but that really isn't anything that I'm not used to these days. Have a great week and I'll talk with you sometime soon.

posted by Scott @ 9:18 PM

Evening to you! And this might have to be a pretty short post as I went out to work on the walls in the garage and planned on spending about 15 minutes on it and came back in the house and an hour had gone by. But I don't have all that much to say this week anyways ...... other than that garage project is going to take me a year or so to complete but one day I'll get it all done and I can picture the finished project in my head ..... still don't think that I'll be parking in there any time soon though. I also replaced a couple more outlets and in the bathroom downstairs I think that it had been there since the house was built and there was about two layers of wallpaper behind the cover - they didn't even both to remove the cover when they took the wallpaper off the wall ....... plus they just paint right over everything, cover outlet and all. I ended up finally getting around to painting around the outlets and the other was in the kitchen and now I've got two more brand spanking new outlets to utilize.

I was also able to figure out my DVR recorder for my DirectTV and guess that the cable guy didn't mess up the wiring as all it took was to reboot the box and it was good to go. It's also fall weather around these parts and has been down in the 30's a few of the nights and I think that it's not suppose to get any warmer than the 50's for the next 10 days. But that's ok as I just got a new blanket from Overstock.com and that came on Friday and it's so nice and comfy, plus I also got one of those big round rain shower heads but that's not coming until Monday as it got delayed for some reason due to inclement weather (somewhere between here and Utah).

I also went to Annapolis the other day and what a drive it is on 495 in the middle of the day - it took me two hours getting there but only 35 minutes getting back, I never realized that the place was so close. And we are starting our budget review meetings this week which should take two or three weeks to get through all of them with our properties and I hope that I can get out of at least a few but we'll see how it goes. I also lost my hard drive on my laptop and it just finally gave out one day but I've known it was coming for the last month as it's been acting very strange so I had it all backed up just in case. But now it's all back to normal and I'm good to go hopefully for a very long time.

I guess that's it and all is good with me - let me know if anything is up with you these days. Talk with you later and have a great week.

posted by Scott @ 9:14 PM

Happy Sunday night and dang if it isn't getting close to winter these days - I actually had to scrape the windshield Friday morning before I went into work! And I think that the weekend was even colder than that and down to about 32' both Friday night and Saturday but the days were just great and up in the mid-60's at least. The lawn is still growing so I ended up mowing that yesterday plus I went and got some winterizer fertilizer and applied that as well ..... and it's looking rather great too ..... well at least the front yard is.

And I had the Adelphia cable guy back out yesterday as they messed up my DirectTV when they installed my internet a couple of weeks ago and now when I try and record something on my DVR it makes me change the channel to that one so it kind of defeats the purpose of having a DVR for the most part. It's suppose to have two lines so that you can watch one channel and record another but now I've only got one line for whatever reason and the cable guy couldn't help me either. I guess that I now have to call DirectTV and play dumb and have them come out and see if they can figure it out. And I guess that Adelphia cable just got bought out by Comcast so now I actually have them, or at least I guess that I will have them at some point in the future. I'd also almost rather switch back over to cable and get rid of the satellite tv all together but I'm under contract with them for another year so I don't think that there is much that I can do about it.

Oh, and they finally ported my old home phone number over to Vonage so I called up Verizon and cancelled both my phone line and my DSL and Vonage has been working just great. I also have my security system working by broadband and I will come out ahead in the long run in regards to cost in the long run. I also replaced the battery in my IPOD the other day as it was getting to the point where it was only lasting a couple of hours on a charge and it used to go a lot longer than that - and that was little tricky getting the thing apart but it ended up coming out just fine.

Other than that not much is new with me and work has been kind of quiet lately, there hasn't been too many people in the office and not sure where they all went but think that they will be back this week. And I think that I am off to Annapolis for a day this week but is only an hour or so drive so I'll go over for a day and come back the next. We also have some people coming in from Starwood for a meeting with us and guess that we are going over to the Sheraton in Reston for a luncheon on Wednesday.

Not too much else to report though so I just hope that everything is going well on your end of the world. Drop me a line if you get a chance, stay warm and take care until we meet again.

posted by Scott @ 8:55 PM

What's going on - here it is another Sunday night and it's pretty much business as usual? Yesterday was a really ugly day and I didn't do much, it was cold and rainy and didn't even get the lawn mowed. But I did have an eye appointment at 10am which at least got me up and out of the house, then I stopped and got my haircut and came home and took a nap. The only other thing that I did was went to the mall for some warmer clothes as my new office has been freezing all ready and can't wait to see how cold it gets this winter. And Dulles Town Center is the mall that I go to and I almost forget that it's even there and rarely go - but it's only about a mile from my house and has just about every store I could ever need. I also had this Philly Cheese Steak sandwich in the food court - but they called it their original and they covered it with cheese whiz ....... the sandwich itself was great but that gooey stuff is still making me cringe. I don't think that I'd order that one again - at least if I do it won't be covered in that nasty stuff.

I also had the handyman guy over on Tuesday and he did a great job fixing the frame on my garage and he also rerouted my faucet to go from the back wall to now go out to the side of the house. Now I'm thinking of other projects for him and I need to replace my sliding glass door at some point and I was also thinking that he could replace my bath tub with a modular shower at some point too - but both of those are pretty big projects so they are going to have to wait for a while. Not too much else to report though although I've been running out of space on my site again so I copied the whole thing to my computer and then had them erase the entire thing - and then I put back what I wanted and I picked up 30 meg of free space by getting rid of all of the crap that has been building up over the last four years. I did end up getting rid of a few of my older pictures but now I've got lots of room to add more as I need to.

But other than that there is nothing new on my end, today was a beautiful day and in the 70's but it's suppose to get down to 35' for the low by the end of the week and think that the week is suppose to be in the 50's. Oh, and my eye is doing fine and I was surprised to hear that it was 70% healed the first day that I went back to the doctors last week and now is completely healed up but I'm still suppose to be careful with it for another week and keep doing my steroid drops for a few more days. But other than that I checked out fine at the doctors and don't need to go back for another month.

I guess that's it for this day, I hope that all is well with you and I'll talk with you again sometime soon. Take it easy till then and have a great week!

posted by Scott @ 8:35 PM

Happy first day of October everyone and it's getting closer and closer to that time of year - you go to work when it's pitch black and you drive home in the same ...... I'm just about there at this point any ways. And the big news is that I had my lasik surgery last Thursday and have been recuperating since, actually there wasn't much recouping to do at all other than the three hour nap after the procedure. After that I got up and wired my home security system to work with a wireless gateway and VOIP phone and think that I finally finished that up at 9pm. But there was really nothing to the procedure and had an appointment at 9am and probably went in around 10:15 after hanging out for an hour, then I was on one machine for 22 seconds and then another for about 15 seconds and I was done - then I just hung around for another 30 minutes until my towncar came and picked me up and brought me home.

It is really pretty amazing though as I was sitting in the doctors office on Thursday reading a magazine and all I could do was pretty much look at the pictures as I couldn't make out the words - but then I went to the eye doctor Friday morning for my post-op exam and I could read a magazine clear as day ...... I haven't been able to see this well in at least the last 10 years. I've been almost afraid to use it as I didn't want to wear it out - but they tell me the more I use it the better the recovery will be. I still can't believe that is all that there was to it, technology these days just continues to amaze me.

Other than that I spent most of Friday rebuilding my next door neighbors computer as they were still having issues with it so I erased the hard drive and started over from scratch. For the most part it's working just fine now and took it back over and set it up yesterday - other than trying to get my old copy of windows to validate the rest was a piece of cake. I also mowed the lawn yesterday even though I'm not suppose to be doing any gardening for two weeks but it was fine and it was also such a beautiful day. Today was another very nice one and in the mid-70's and it's suppose to be in the 80's for a few days this week before things cool back down again. They said that we wouldn't see 80' temps any more this year but I guess that they really didn't know what they were talking about and were just making that up.

I moved my office on Wednesday and spent half of the day working from there but I really wasn't all that productive trying to get used to the new place. Hopefully this week will be easier but I guess that we'll see. I have also been having issues with my laptop for like the last three weeks, first the hard drive was failing and wouldn't even boot and now it boots but is wicked slow and no matter what I try I haven't been able to figure out what the issue is. But I did end up deleting a bunch of things off of it this weekend and it seems better - but I guess I'll need to see how it works in the office on the docking station before I know for sure. I also have my handyman guy coming over to fix my garage door frame and talked with him today - and he was suppose to be coming over a week from tomorrow but guess that he has time and might even do it on Tuesday - he also wants me to think of anything else that I would like him to do and the list goes on. A new sliding glass door would be nice but I guess that I need to wait a little while for that one.

I guess that's about it for this week, I'm doing fine with my eye and it all went perfectly - and I think that I would recommend it to anyone but I need to see how long it lasts ..... they are saying I should be good for the next ten years anyways before they need to tweak things again. So, I hope that all is well with you too and I'll be talking with you sometime soon. Take care till then and have a great week!

posted by Scott @ 8:49 PM