One more jaunt off into the wilderness before school starts for Bets and hopefully I find a job. We’re off to see B’s family, and her new niece and nephew (Hannah and Tyler). Back later this weekend, and buckling down.
Books consumed over the vacation
- Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
- A Fire Upon the Deep by Verner Vinge
- Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
- The Davinci Code by Dan Brown (the paperback not yet available in the states, but for some reason available in Mexico)
- The Silent Blade by R.A. Salvatore
Not all great literature, but Oryx and Crake was interesting (it wasn’t great sci-fi, but passable). Davinci was a page turner, but was ruined by the Deus Ex Machina ending and some of the ridiculous “eureka” moments. A Fire Upon was brilliant sci-fi, but took me some time to get into…the pack aliens were bizarre before you knew what was going on. The Silent Blade is just typical D&D ficition…not great, but I read it anyway. Sue me. 😛 Me Talk Pretty was great…hilarious as always for Sedaris.
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Wednesday
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Thursday
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Friday
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Saturday
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These were my views all week while laying by one of the 5 pools at the Fairmont Acapulco Princess. More pics (and soon captions and explanations) at our Gallery.
Bloggin´from Acapulco
Well, we´re having a blast in Mexico, and weather.com is full of crap…it´s been wonderful here. We´ve just spent most of the time lounging by pools and staring at the ocean…many, many pictures to come. Hope that everyone is doing well!
Our week in Acapulco.

Long time, no blog
Wow…didn’t realize that it had been days since I’ve been on here. Shows you how busy we’ve been. In the last few days we’ve been to Chatanooga twice, to Winchester and to Tullahoma. We’re trying to get ready to go to Mexico, get our license and registration for our car, and get all the other little things about a new place figured out. So far, we’ve found the WalMart (both of ’em), the Lowe’s, and the closest two movie theaters.
We’re getting there.
From the Sewanee Messenger:
“Chief Jim Parrott reports that the department patrolled 4,937 miles; investigated one automobile accident; no arrests were made; one Speeding Citation and four warnings were issued; and seven dogs were picked up for the pound.”
That’s for the entire month of June.
🙂

Today we took some time and hiked a tiny bit of the perimeter trail next to Morgan’s Steep at Sewanee. This is pic from a random stream that we crossed…whatever this place lacks in consumer comforts it more than makes up for in sheer beauty.
The area around the Domain is just amazing…cliffs and streams and waterfalls and amazing flora and fauna. Yesterday we ate dinner with my sister and brother-in-law on our screen porch while we watched two deer graze along the edge of the woods of our backyard.
…there is internet at the Griffey-Sandlin household. Expect more posts (hopefully complete with pictures!) soon.
In other news, I think the laptop is dead. I re-applied thermal compound to the heatsink, and checked all the “overheating” issues, and that’s definitely NOT it. It’s not software (I booted from a CD, still happened). My guess now is that something on the ‘board got screwed up somehow. Time to make a call to the insurance company and see if this is covered….
And the fun goes on…
I throw myself at the tech help knowledge of the readership of the blog. Here’s the situation:
Unpack laptop, plug laptop in, laptop works fine.
Listen to music on laptop all night, since it’s the only entertainment we have.
Thunderstorms all night.
Next day, laptop won’t stay booted: it boots, and lets you do somethings, then after 3-10 minutes of running, freezes, the screen goes wonky (typically a bunch of horizontal flickering lines) and it dies. Just powers down…no warning, nothin’.
My rough diagnosis: it acts like it’s overheating. I’m not sure why that would be the case suddenly (is there any chance of elevation effecting it??). I removed the fans and heatsink, and there’s practically no heatsink paste left. My brother in law is bringing a tube for me to use over the weekend, so I’ll clean and reapply that. The really strange thing is that when it works, it’s perfect…nothing seems wrong. Then BOOM, dead.
Ideas? It’s a Sager laptop, Pentium 4 1.5GhZ. ANY ideas/help would be appreciated.



