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7:50pm - I stayed home from work most of today. Our airconditioner (yes, the brand new one) started screwing up a few days ago. First it was cycling on and off several times a minute. So I shut it off. The guy who installed it for us came out and looked at it but when he turned it on, it was fine. Then after he left, it would not turn off. I switched it off but it ran for hours until I eventually turned off the breaker in the garage. Anyway he came out today but it took him a long time to diagnose the problem. TUrned out to be a bad control board inside the unit upstairs.

I got a neat program a few days ago. For years I've been playing old games from the 1980s that were meant for Commodore computers, Atari, etc. on my PC using emulator software. But one thing I haven't really seen is an emulator for the IBM PC. That sounds crazy to a certain extent because almost everybody has a modern version of the IBM PC, and most, if not all, of those units can still run MS-DOS and run most any old software package. But most people (including myself) are running Windows XP and using an NTFS filesystem. So the only way I could run MS-DOS would require significant alteration to my system. And even if I wanted to go through the trouble, it still wouldn't have sound. All the old games from the 1980's want to use an AD-Lib card or a Sound Blaster. Modern PCs don't even have an ISA socket that you could put a Sound Blaster in, and the new Sound Blasters are only PCI and are not backwards compatible. So, in essence, the only way to play old MS-DOS games in their full glory requires an older computer. But I found a neat emulator called "DOSBOX" a few days ago. It emulates a 286 and gives you AD-Lib and Sound Blaster support, and even mouse support. It works very well, and has full-screen modes with direct-X. So I've been reliving some of the old games from the IBM-PC days. I played Populous, Lemmings, SimCity, Avoid the Noid, and many others. It is sort of funny, but I have kept that old 486 laptop of mine around specifically so that when I felt like it, I could play those old games. But it has no sound capability. Almost no laptops from that time period did. And I can't see keeping a big clunker computer around just so I can play those old games with sound. So this is good.

I've been playing around with Paint-Shop-Pro a lot the last few days. I've learned to do some new and exciting things with it. One of the neatest things I learned to do is use a second drawing layer like tracing paper. That way I can trace a picture of something or somebody and make it look like something out of a coloring book for toddlers. Then I can use the paint-fill routines and fill them with color, if I want. That ends up making something looking like a cartoon character. I've done this on about 5 pictures so far. The result is great, and I've gotten better at it each time.

Well, I'm laying in bed right now.. Leslie and I just got back from Pancho's and I ate way too much. Leslie just went to go get Hailey (SHe is next door with my parents) and we might watch King Kong. Leslie rented that (to my dissatisfaction) but I might watch it.. don't know yet.