I checked the status on the order from Tiger Direct for the quiet fan. It’s backordered. They’ll let me know when it’s on the way. Meantime, I’m using my iMac for as much of my activities as possible. I turn on the PC every once-in-a-while but the noise becomes overbearing and off it goes. Nina originally said she couldn’t hear it. But this afternoon when I had heard enough, I shut the PC down and Nina asked me what that noise was that stopped. She then agreed that the fan is just plain too noisey. Who knows when the replacement fan will be here? Meanwhile, I’m getting more and more acclimated to the iMac and finding that I really like the machine. To make it really do all that I need, I’ll need to buy some software, but for everything except genealogy, I could see it easily replacing my PC. Unfortunately, PAF is not available for the Macintosh and there doesn’t seem to be any other reasonable genealogy programs available. The Mac notebook computers have been selling very well and I read somewhere recently that about 12% of the notebooks being sold are Macintosh. I can understand why. They are lightning fast and very secure. One may make its way into my possession some day soon.

It has been very hot the past couple of weeks. Temperatures in excess of a hundred degrees several days in a row are setting records. The weather people say that a high pressure system over the area is beginning to break down and that cooler temperatures will move in later in the week. That’s all well and good, but the grass still has to be mowed. I put it off for two weeks and that was long enough. I started the front yard Friday night when the sun went behind the mountain. I got it about two-thirds done when I had to quit for the night. Saturday morning I started mowing about 7:30 a.m. and finished about 10 a.m. and had breakfast. Then came the trimming around the house and fence which took another hour. By that time the temperatures were well above 95 degrees. I had thought of going downtown for the 24th of July Parade, but the heat changed my mind. Instead we hauled four huge garbage sacks of grass up to the county dump (the grass was that high!) and spent the afternoon indoors. Dinner at Applebee’s rounded out the day so that Nina didn’t have to do any cooking. It was a good day for being inside.

I’ve done some work on the picture album software. The ability to remove a picture has been added to the system. The picture isn’t really deleted, just moved to a topic titled "Deleted Pics". That topic isn’t displayed on the album page, however the picture is still available if it were to be needed later. There’s still more work to be done to the album software, but that’ll wait for another day.

My brother Perry and I have been discussing getting together for a couple of days in August. We’ve settled on the 21st through 23rd of August in Hoback Junction, Wyoming. They are a lot of fun to go do things with and I’m looking forward to the short vacation.

A week or so ago I got a call from my Uncle Ted in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He was looking for a couple of young men that would have been nephews on his side of the family. They had a small inheritance coming from his recently deceased brother. Through divorces and remarriages, his family had lost track of this Pocatello branch. Using the city library and the city directories available there, I was able to find an address for the mother. I sent a letter in hopes of getting a forwarding address. She called me this afternoon after receiving the letter. She was certainly surprised that anyone from that family was looking for her or her sons. She is now in contact with my uncle and these fellows (they are certainly not young men any more — married with families!) will be getting the inheritance that their great grandfather put away for them many years ago. This was a search for which the Internet was no help. Thankfully, books and libraries still exist and the needed information was found. Life continues to be good!