With my parents in town for a visit, we decided to go up to Snoqualmie to ride on the train, and see the falls. It was kind of a cool cloudy day, but didn't rain too much on us - just a few sprinkles. The train museum is very interesting, and has a lot of information and history of how the railroads were built and used in the pacific northwest.

Here is the train pulling back into the station


We took a ride on the train down to the overlook across from the falls. We had fun taking pictures.

and waving to people on the street.

We saw the falls and the lodge from across the river.



After our train ride, we drove to the falls, and saw some kayakers on the river at the base of the falls.




It was a fun day, and not too far from home.

Here is a view from the ground, looking up at the tree that holds the platform which may someday become a treehouse.

I finally completed the fourth wall of the treehouse, and lugged it down to the back yard. I adjusted the swing so that it was a bit lower and more user-friendly to its intended audience.

I stood up a couple of the walls and began bolting them together. When they were standing and bolted, I went around and put some more screws in the plywood to hold it on as securely as possible.

With a little bit of help from my father who was visiting, I got all four pieces assembled and bolted together to make sure they fit as intended. It all seemed to go very well, and everything matched up.

Then, the Inspector showed up, with his camera...

but it was all good.

Now that I have the walls assembled on the ground,
I am thinking that since it is so heavy, more supports on the platform will be needed, so that's the next step. More to follow.

There is a new FireFox 3 plug-in called ScribeFire that makes it easy to publish blog entries direct from the browser itself. It looks like a pretty good tool, fairly full-featured and compatible with many blog formats. Try it out and see if it makes life any easier for blogging!

For the last three years almost, I have been watching movies and programming with Visual Studio, and surfing the net on a Sharp 65" DLP projection TV. For some reason a few weeks ago, it started to make this sound sort of like a jet engine revving up for take-off, and almost as loud. Since I bought the thing through Co**co.com, I decided to give them a ring to see what I should do to get it repaired. I sent them an email through their customer service link, and a few days got an email back telling me to take it back to my local Co**co warehouse for a refund. Refund? I bought this set in November 2005. Couldn't believe it, so I went to the local warehouse. Sure enough, customer service says, just bring it back in any time.

Well, the thing is truly gigantic, so I disassembled the stair railing I built about 2 years ago, and called in some guys for help. The 4 of us managed to wrestle the thing up the narrow stairs and get it loaded into the truck, where I proceeded to drive it up to the local store. I was astonished when in fact they brought out some paperwork and a check for the original purchase price, with tax and shipping. Turns out that Co**co.com's policy in 2005 was "bring it back for a full refund" without *ANY* time limit! Essentially I had full use of a 65" DLP projection set for almost three years FOR FREE!

Without further ado, I happily took my new check in my pocket, and my credit card in my other pocket, and proceeded to purchase a new 52" LCD set which I am using now. It's not nearly as gigantic, but it IS big... And it's got a much higher native resolution so development and surfing on the big screen were never better.

Just wanted to get the word out that if someone has some electronics they bought from Co**co.com before they changed their policy to 90 day returns, just bring it back to the store for a full refund!

Then buy a newer better one for half the price WOOHOO!

Today we decided that since it was cool enough and not raining, it might be a good time to get some of the log piles in the yard from the last few years of downed trees consolidated into a single pile (not on the lawn area). Its about 8' vertical and about 100' up the hill, but we managed to get about half of them rolled up the hill and stacked in a pile on some old plywood.
Even though it was cool, it was still a log of work to get about a thousand pounds of logs rolled up the hill and stacked... I would just have started splitting them except we already have about half a cord split and stacked... Perhaps I will look into a fireplace insert to keep the heat costs down this winter...

Hauled some more lumber and plywood up to the garage after church today. Put together the first of the two side walls. These are 6' high, and will hold up the low side of the roof. I decided to keep them simple, with just a 27" window in the center. Here is the first one completed.

Here's the back (inside) view.

I rolled it out to the treehouse on the dolly. Sounds easy right? Of course it is. Unless the wall weighs 60lb and is almost 8' wide. And it's downhill about 6'. And there are low spots on the grass. Nevertheless, I persevered and got it down to the treehouse where I placed it next to the ladder.


Then I began construction on wall #3.


5 Blue Angels jets flew by in formation just a little south, at 1:43PM. It was nice to at least catch a glimpse. Next year perhaps we'll go. After another hour, I had the second wall constructed, a duplicate of the first.



Now, it was time to haul it down to the treehouse... I paused to rest a moment and get a picture.


Now, I just have to figure out how I am going to get 300lb of walls up 10'...


More to follow.