The summer of 2007 seemed to have been in a slump. Everyone hoping to have a profitable summer with more homes for sale on the market, loans approved left and right, and the U.S. economy looking so much better than the year before.

What happened?

Fall is upon us and the scare of subprimes surfaced. More and more people are losing their homes, lenders are closing most of their branches and in some cases declaring bankruptcy, while the U.S. ecomony is seeing more and more layoffs causing a multitude of chain reactions and Wall Steet desparately clinging on to projected numbers while investors demand immediate results and the Feds lowering interest rates yet again.

Where is this heading? A possible and potential, dare I say, recession.

Here are a two links that list the activities of mortgage lenders such as
closures, layoffs, bankruptcy and more:

The Truth About Mortgage
The Mortage Lender IMPLODE-O-METER

I wonder how 2008 will look. Will there be more jobs created? Will there be affordable home? Will the cost of living slowdown? Will the U.S. Dollar lose it’s buying power? What will happen?

Yeap, it’s about 1:30 am. and I just finish soldering a set of LEDs to create a matrix 3 cube. While I’m stretching I wonder whether our niece has taken her first breath in this world. I wonder how Erika and Mikey are doing. I guess quite exhuasted and very tired.

I can picture the bundle of joy being cuddle by Erika as she screams for the first time while Mikey gently touches he’s beautiful daughter. Throughtout this journery of their’s I wished them a very safe and healthy birthing. Just in case…

Happy Birthday Arianna Marie Nelson. Welcome to our family, beautiful.

Congratulations Mikey and Erika.

UPDATE: While I was thinking of them and writing this post unbenounced to me Mikey had made the announcement of Arianna’s birth.

Today seemed like another day. Ron working away doing his thing on his computer. On the other hand I was cleaning up and things that needed to be done. Somewhere in the early afternoon, we got a package. Ron surprised me with a webcam
Pretty cool. He got some other stuff that he was sorting through. After installing and playing with the webcam for awhile, I left to run an errand. Got back. Finished up doing some cleaning.

Somewhere between dinner and now… All I can say,
HOUSTON, WE’VE GOT A PROBLEM!!!!

Ron workhorse computer seems to have died. He rebooted it several times. Quite frustrating.

I feel for him. No matter how advanced the technology there’s always something that goes wrong. Agggghhh. I just hope that he doesn’t lose all his work. It’s so painful.

Well, just in case he doesn’t appear on the blog for awhile I thought you should know.

In case you hadn’t heard, the list of recalled pet food is growing, and is now including all of the Alpo wet food line. In addition, some DRY food has been added to the list. I highly recommend that pet owners check for updates on the web sites. (A lady here at work just found out that her pet is sick from a recently added food.)

While I don’t own any pets, I know that there are a couple of “hippy organic” pet foods out there made with bison meat. It might be a good idea to check that out as an option. I’ve seen Timber Wolf Organics mentioned by some people. It may also be possible to make the food at home, but I’m not sure.

Evelyn and I took a walk down the Shoal Creek Greenbelt again today. This time Ev took her camera, so there are a bunch of new photos available. You can find them here: Shoal Creek Greenbelt.

I’ve installed some new anti-spam software which should remove the need for me to moderate comments. Previously each comment was sent to moderation (for me to approve) before it got posted. That’s why you’d see a delay between when you posted and when it showed it. Send me an e-mail if you have any problems adding new comments. As before, you have to enter your name and e-mail address.

The second, more minor thing, is how the links on the right-nav work. The Photos and Other Blogs links will now open to new windows/tabs. No more holding down the shift-key.

I updated my WordPress install to the newest version (mainly for security reasons) and now some stuff isn’t working (like links to other blogs). I’ll be fixing it shortly. Please let me know if you encounter any other problems.

Update: I fixed the “Other Blogs” area, so they should be showing up now. For some reason this new installation updated the Category IDs. Ah, well. That’s progress for you. Let me know if anything else looks broken (besides the squished calendar).

Update 2: Whoops! Photos were missing. Added that back in.

I showed Evelyn how to use the Photo Gallery software, so she’s in the process of loading up pics. Use the Austin & Puerto Rico Photos link to get into the gallery.

Update: As you can probably tell, Austin is a pretty dog friendly town. You see them all over the place, and in stores, too. Lowes is probably the most dog-friendly store we’ve been to. We usually spot 4-5 dogs per visit.

I had to shut comments off because I was getting spammed too much. I’ll let you know when comments are on again. For now, e-mail us with any thoughts.

I have been (and will continue to be) really busy over the next couple of weeks. I’ve got three software development projects queued up, all needing to be done “yesterday”. Well, actually, only one needed to be done “yesterday”…the others are due slightly after that.

So, it might be hard for me to keep the blog updated in a timely manner. Have no fear, we’re still here–and I’ll try and get Ev to write here more often.

Update: So much for slow posting! I’ve already posted up three things today (May 1st). I gotta get back to work!