Byronland – The Adventures of Sandy & Alex

If you venture out into the desert in Southern Arizona for whatever recreational activity you might enjoy, you are very likely to encounter one of these signs which are found all over the place:

In other words, you are taking your life in your hands by exploring unpopulated land in Southern Arizona. There is a distinct possibility that you might run into Mexican criminals smuggling drugs and/or people that won’t hesitate to shoot and kill law-abiding U.S. citizens on U.S. soil to protect their illegal activities.

Hmmmm – if there was only an organization that was lawfully obligated to defend our borders, lead by a person who swore to protect its citizens, having at their disposal a group of people specifically equipped and trained to do those jobs. We should look into that…

I can’t tell you how many years it’s been since I last built myself a new computer, or I’ll have to turn in my geek card. Suffice it to say, it’s been way too long. However, thanks to a nice profit sharing check I found myself in the position to place an order with Newegg for a thoroughly researched list of components to build myself a new computer – hooray!

Here it is in all its shiny black glossy classy gloriousness (though the photo doesn’t really do it justice):

I really like this case. Not only does it look great, but it also has a long list of very nice features. One of them is clever cable management options that allow you route almost all the component cables underneath the motherboard tray.

As a result, you have a very nice and clean interior, it is very easy to work in, and it has optimal airflow for cooling.

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After several friends recently, uh, encouraged me to get with the program, I bit the bullet and set up a Facebook account.

Thanks to a lively blog discussion with Midori on Friday evening, I got inspired to do some work on the blog. This weekend, I completely overhauled our blog here at http://www.byronland.com and installed a plugin that links it to my Facebook account.

If I did this correctly, everything I post on the blog from now on will automagically appear on the Facebook page. I don’t feel like migrating 10 years worth of blog entries and stories to Facebook, so this will do just fine.

Let’s see if it works…

We went to a Super Bowl party yesterday. My ears are still ringing today…

Everybody was dressed up.

Including the girls.

Click here for full-size pics.

Our area has several houses that launch hot air balloons from their yards, mostly on weekend mornings. We’ll be sitting at breakfast and suddenly see a balloon sail by the window. Here’s a balloon that we captured just seconds after take off.

We went for a stroll with friends in Sabino Canyon. It was in the 70s, blue sky, sunshine, light breeze – in other words, a perfect January day.

Click here for more photos.

Today we had a little get-together at our house for my birthday.

Sandy made a metric assload of great food which was enjoyed by all. We had about 15 people over.

This was our first party at the house and it was great. Good company, good food, good times.

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Our new dining room chairs came, joining the dining table (which has been here a couple of months).We’re going with an “organic contemporary” style which uses pieces with clean lines that are constructed from natural materials like wood, stone and leather. So far, we have a dining table and chairs, bar stools, sofa, entertainment center, bar cabinet, one sofa table and two end tables in the great room. We are waiting on a coffee table and second sofa table to arrive in a few weeks. They discontinued the living room rug we picked out, so we still need to find a rug and two comfy chairs for the living room. And we want to add a low table/wooden bench to fit under the window in the dining room.We aren’t even thinking about decorative touches until we have all of the big pieces. Besides, we want to keep the house uncluttered and we figure we’ll buy art as we find it rather than just buying something to fill spaces. Hopefully you’ll think the pieces are a good fit for the house. Feel free to voice your opinion either way….