Leinninger.com

As mentioned in the previous post, the new driveway is in place. We tried parking the van and trailer on it 5 days after installation and 2 days after a lot of rain. The right side of the trailer got too close to the edge on the side of the driveway (about 3 feet above the surrounding ground) and the driveway crumbled. The trailer tires were in pretty deep. Glenn came over to share his trailer expertise and help dig out the trailer. With a jack and some boards we got the trailer out and parked next to the shop. There’s a good chance we’ll need to widen the driveway and figure out some sort of reinforcement for the sides.

Recently, we’ve had a lot of big thunderstorms. On Tuesday, our power went out for 12 hours. We’re thinking that some sort of generator is in our plans withing the next few years, since we have a well (needs electricity) and a sump (REALLY needs electricity). In the meantime, we’ve decided to rig up a giant hamster wheel for our pets to run on connected to a couple of magnets. Viola: pet generator.

On the 26-27th I will be racing at Grattan Raceway for the first time. I’ve never been there before, but Glenn is a seasoned pro (wink) and I’ll be looking to him for some pointers. This will be our first “away-from-home” race together, too. Gina will be there cheering us on and keeping us in line.

I’ve been experimenting with Second Life. At first glance, it appears to be a big 3-D chat room. However, there’s a lot more than first meets the eye. There are over 6 million “residents”, with close to 2 million unique users logging in every 2 months. Almost 2 million U.S. Dollars are spent every day! The entire world is user created and the the inventors of the game (or whatever you want to call it) provide all of the tools you need to create your own content and scripts. There are even laws being developed in the U.S. in reaction to Second Life activity. I would gamble that within 2 years, second life will be nearly as commonplace as the world wide web is today.