Assorted Things

Assorted Things

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Garmin Forerunner 745 Screen Fractures

Garmin Forerunner 745 Screen Fractures

The Garmin FR745 [https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/713363] watch was something I had on my Christmas list for 2021. I didn't get it, and ended up going ahead and ordering it before the holidays were over. I had a Garmin Vivoactive 3 [https://www.garmin.com/

Chamberlain RJ070

Chamberlain RJO70 Wall-Mounted Garage Door Opener

While Kelly got jewelry for our 5 year anniversary...she went a less expected route for what she got me: a garage door opener she knew I thought was cool. It's a wall-mounted directly attached opener, the Chamberlain RJO70 [https://www.chamberlain.com/wall-mount-battery-backup-garage-door-opener/p/RJO70] . It'

Elgato Ring Light with Ubiquiti

After my super cheap Neewer USB ring light [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07SJ46DS6] had the stand break when collapsed in my bag (taken to a work event to try to use as a webcam tripod), I decided to replace it with a better tier of ring light. After

The Suprising Difficulty of Mounting a Weather Station

One item on my Christmas list that panned out was the Ambient Weather WS-2000 weather station [https://ambientweather.com/amws2000.html]. My sister got it for me! It doesn't come with a real mounting bracket, and some searching Amazon landed me the Winegard J pipe mount. It comes

Updated Emergency Supplies List

Updated Emergency Supplies List

With the February 14, 2021 - February 21, 2021 winter storm problems here in Austin, we were able to benefit from some prior staged prepared supplies. It also revealed a few things that would have been nice to have. I'll cover the current items on hand, and then

GE Appliances Nixes Negative Reviews

GE Appliances Nixes Negative Reviews

In June 2018, we ordered a GE Profile gas cooktop, this 5 burner 30" model, the PGP7030SLSS [https://www.geappliances.com/appliance/GE-Profile-30-Built-In-Gas-Cooktop-with-5-Burners-and-Optional-Extra-Large-Cast-Iron-Griddle-PGP7030SLSS] . As a cooktop, it was a nice upgrade from the as-base-as-possible 30" GE gas cooktop that the builder installed in 2003. None of the burners

Getting off Bluehost Wordpress

Getting off Bluehost Wordpress

I've had a Bluehost [http://www.bluehost.com] account for years.....years! Maybe since 2011-2012 or so, if I had to guess. It was hard to pass up: the teaser price was insanely cheap, and it was unlimited bandwidth and tens of GB more storage than needed, along

CyberPower 1350AVR UPS Failure

CyberPower 1350AVR UPS Failure

The UPS I bought years ago at Costco seemed to go on the fritz: the display was blinking nonstop, and it seemed like it was cycling the power on some of its outlets, even. A stereo amp plugged into it would periodically turn on during this, as if it had

Mystery Scat

Months ago, while doing the lawn, we noticed some (what seemed to be) poop on the top of the large air conditioning compressor unit next to the house. Weeks later...even more. We don't have any dogs these days (and no way miniature dachshunds can get up on

Quarantine Haircut

Quarantine Haircut

Ames got a cut of his own by Kelly a few days ago. All of the scissors on Amazon were showing delivery dates weeks in the future, so I ordered from Sally. Even then, they didn't ship until over a week after the order..but I still got

Beach and Lava

First off, I had to comment on how sweet this hotel (Hotel Wailea) has been. It's visually pretty cool, with things like this big circular lobby: …or viewed from down below: The building is open to the outside. There are glass partial walls in all of these..but

First Day in Maui

First Day in Maui

We made it to our #babymoon! Corbett and I planned this trip as a sort of "last hurrah," and something super relaxing before things get busy with baby classes, appointments every two weeks, and the home stretch before Baby Klempay comes. We are splitting our week between two

Orvieto to Petritoli

A couple of weeks ago we were in Kansas, and stopped to visit my favorite teacher, Dr. Nixon. My high school trip to Italy was with his history seminar class, and I think he still goes almost every year. He knows his stuff. We mentioned we had an open afternoon

Rome and Petritoli

I had meant to post an overview post before leaving home, but travel lately has been hectic. As I type this, we’ve already been in Rome for a day. We’ve come over for Vanessa & Kevin’s wedding [http://www.hess-scaringi-wedding.com], which will take place a few

A Slew of Additional Honeymoon Photos

Originally, we planned to post a bunch more pictures directly on here after pulling all of the photos from all three (7D, RX100M4, Nexus 6P) cameras into Lightroom once back in Austin. I did pull them into Lightroom, totally ~1300 photos. Some of those photos are variations of one another,

A Quick Update Before We Go...

We get up tomorrow morning and head back home from Heathrow (through DFW). Our three week blur of a trip is pretty much at an end! It’s been great, but it will also be nice to get back to Austin and everything there (people/things/eating in a manner

Someone Driving Us For A Change

The last full day we spent in the south of France was in Avignon, where Kelly already filled everyone in on our hotel. When planning the trip, I had originally considered staying in Avignon for a few days, as it has some sights of its own, and would be a

Paris Je'Taime

To contrast my last post, here are some images from our hotel in Paris. It is so different and unique, and nice, that we could barely remember the melamine fixtures from Avignon if it weren’t for our thorough photo record. We are staying at the Maison Souquet, which from

Great Expectations

Last time I wrote, I talked about how each day had been getting better and better, with more and more beautiful hotels and locations with every town we visited. Well, we broke our streak! Our hotel in Avignon brought us back down to Earth. We stayed at the Cloitre San

Rewind a Bit: Monaco and Nice

Due to not having any pictures uploaded for these two, we hadn’t commented on our time in Monaco or Nice yet. We hit Monaco when we were still in Eze, as it is very close. Our hotel is close enough to Monaco that they have packages for the annual

A Tad More Luberon

I managed to upload some more photos shot on my phone when we have been out and about in Paris, as the 4G data service I get when roaming town is much faster than the hotel wifi. A few more shots that I would have included in the earlier post.

A Too-Short Time in the Luberon

We’re a bit behind on posting; we have even had images uploaded for about 2 days, awaiting a post, but keep getting prevented from posting: staying up too late to write at night and spotty network connectivity (especially on the Avignon – Paris TGV ride). I have a bunch more

Expanding Waistlines and Good Scents

France has been so great! When we got to Eze, I said “Screw Italy!” And when we got to Gourdes, I said, “Screw Eze!” Each place we have gone has been so nice, we’re one upping ourselves right and left. My post this morning is focused on things we

Goodbye to Italy, Hello to France

On Sunday, we had to finally say goodbye to Italy and make our way to France. It wasn’t as straightforward as just hopping in the car and driving over; we’d returned our car on Friday in La Spezia on our way to Vernazza. Being Sunday, local car rental

Cinque Terre Hiking

After breakfast, we wandered around our hotel (the Gianni Franzi) a bit to explore some of the decks that we could see but didn’t get to the day before. We found a great one really close to our room, with a bunch of chairs and sweet views. [https://ramblings.