Texashiker's Blog

Spring is here

texashiker — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 22:28:24 +0000

Finally, the cold winter weather has passed and the first signs of spring are here. The trees are starting to bloom, the dogwood trees are a beautiful white, peach trees have pretty pink blooms and the first signs of spring are everywhere.

The Texas heat

texashiker — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:48:17 +0000

The Texas heat has kicked in full blast. Its getting 100 degrees here between noon and 3pm – with no relief in sight. A low pressure system is supposed to settle of the state and when that happens, the heat os just going to get worse.

The grass is dying, the only green parts are the places that my wife and I watered. At least I dont have to cut it. It sure is going to be hot for the 4th of July. Most of east Texas is under a burn ban. I sure hope no fires get started with all of the fireworks.

Left 4 Dead

texashiker — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 19:32:47 +0000

Left 4 Dead is one freaking awesome game. When it first came out there were some great reviews. And now that I bought the game I can see how great it really is.

One thing that I really like is how the game forces people to work together. If the team does not have team work, they will not survive. Survivors that get off by themselves are quickly picked off by the zombies.

Spring is on the way

texashiker — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 19:23:16 +0000

Its about time this cold weather passes through and spring is ready to make its arrival. The warmer weather feels good. so tis time to go outside and go fishing, canping, maybe do a little hiking.

My wife and I joined a gym. We both need to lose some weight and get into shape.

My kids will be at my house this weekend. We are hoping to go to the movies, maybe even go to the local park and go fishing. If we go to the park, we will bring some picnic stuff, or cook some hot dogs on a grill. Both either way, the weather looks like its going to be great.

Around March 14th or 21st it will be time to plant the garden.

Another year has passed, and how fast this is going by

texashiker — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 01:22:26 +0000

2008 passed by like a flash, and that is one reason why its so important to take as many digital pictures as you can. A few weeks ago my daughter asked me if I wanted to look at some family pictures with her. Even though I wanted to, I knew that if I did I would be crying within minutes.

As I look back over the pictures that I took during 2008, there is never enough. I often think to myself that I could have taken more pictures. During 2009 I will have to keep that in mind.

Right now I am using an older Sony WS-5 to take pictures and video. My wife has a Canon SD 750 – the 750 is a nice camera, but there are certain things that I do not like about it.

The next camera that I am looking at is the Canon Powershot D10 – its water proof to 33 feet, shock proof to a 4 foot drop and looks like it has a solid metal housing. The draw back is it uses a lithium battery. The D10 is not supposed to be released until April or May of 2009. So I am going to start saving my money now. Hopefully, when summer rolls around I wil have a new camera to take pictures of my kids.

Team Fortress Forums

texashiker — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:30:46 +0000

This past summer Korey (my son) asked about him getting a Team Fortress website and forum. My reply was along the lines of “sure, why not?”.

Things have changed a lot since I was a kid in the 1970s and 1980s. Back then the internet was unheard of and computers were a fad. Some people even laughed at the need for an over grown calculator. And now, kids have their own websites.

Not only did Korey and I start a website but we also opened a youtube account. In which, we have started making videos and posting them on youtube and in the forums.

Years ago parents would play ball, frisbee or catch. Today we still do that kind of stuff, but now we make websites, play online computer games and make videos to go along with everything else.

When Korey and I make a gaming video, it is as important to me as a picture or a video of real life. Sunday we were watching some of the videos I recorded friday and saturday night. It was like watching a real family video. Korey was telling me what he was doing when I was filming, he would say “watch this, I’am getting ready to grab the flag.” I was really cool to sit there with my son and watch a video that we had filmed while playing this video game.

This is one of the videos we made this pat weekend.

Besides that, Korey got his first deer of this year – it was a 100 pound doe. But that will be another post.

November 22 and 23

texashiker — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:27:53 +0000

This past weekend was a good one. The only thing I regret as not getting Korey out of bed saturday morning to go deer hunting, but he stayed up late playing fortress forever. And, the temps were below freezing saturday morning. So it was a combination of straying up too late, and below freezing temps.

We had our thanksgiving dinner this past saturday, because my kids will be at my crazy ex wifes house for thanksgiving weekend. After we ate dinner, Korey and I went to the woods and got in a deer stand. It was around 5pm when 3 does walked out. They were only about 20 – 30 feet from the stand and were looking straight at Korey and I. The deer got spooked and ran across the old logging road and into the tree line.

Saturday morning Kristian had her pageant, where she won her category. We were back home before noon to get ready for the family lunch.

Saturday evening Korey and I played some FF, we stayed on 2fort for a little while, then the map changed to Monkey. For some reason my computer is getting too hot while playing the games. The system locked up, so I restarted and took a break for a little while.

Sunday Korey and I went to a different stand, and did not see anything. I was rather disappointed, but we had a good time. After we got back home, Korey and TJ went riding around while Kristian and I watched hell boy 2.

When korey got back home, we got together in a couple of games of Fortress-Forever

Korey is excited about his Fortress Forum. It would be nice if he had a home computer, but his mom will not buy him a new one or fix his old one. So he might get to check on his website just a couple of times a week. When he is at my house, he tries to get as much playing time in as possible.

When the kids comeback in 2 weeks, are going to have to spend some more time in the woods. 3 weeks have passed since opening weekend, and we have not seen a good sized deer yet.

Team Fortress Videos

texashiker — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:49:00 +0000

After a little trial and error, it seems that Koreys Team Fortress Videos on youtube are off to a running start. It took a few videos a several hours worth of fine tuning, but the end results looks pretty good.

Korey seems excited about getting his youtube channel and his Team Fortress Forums up and running. I am just hoping that the youtube promotion videos get popular and we get some traffic to the forum. This weekend we are supposed to work on some conc jumping videos. This evening I will probably work on a Team Fortress 2 strategy video for the map Goldrush. There is a critical hold point in that map I have not seen anyone discuss or even mention. So I guess it time to put some of that Quakeworld Death Match experience to good use.

Taking time for your kids

texashiker — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:25:42 +0000

As I get older there is one thing that I really regret, and that is not making more time for my kids when they were little. My two oldest kids are now 19 and 21 years old, and it seem like just yesterday that they were kids playing in the back yard.

The youngest two are 14 and 12 years old. My ex-wife and I have been divorced for about 8 years, so I have missed out on a major part of their lives. When these two come over to my house (which is every other weekend) I try to spend time with them, but we have so little of it. I feel like we pick the kids up, go home, them take them back. The weekend just flies by so quick.

Korey, my 14 year old son enjoys online computer games, hiking, camping and hunting. In a lot of ways he is just like me. In February of 2007 we took our first real camping trip in the woods. Even though the night time air got a little too cold for our sleeping bags, we all had a good time.

One of Koreys favorite computer games is Fortress-Forever. While Korey was spending the summer with my wife and I, he asked about a website. I just happen to do a little website development on the side, so I put him together a landing page and a forum. In case anyone is interested, the website name is Fortress Traning and then there is his Team Fortress Forum.

The first landing page was built with mambo, but the bridge with the SMF forum did not work well. I took the mambo site down and went with mkportal, well that CMS lacks certain SEO (look that term up) features. I just happened to be running wordpress one a couple of my sites, so I removed mkportal and installed wordpress as the landing page. So far everything is going good, but when changing themes I realized that the new theme lost the meta description. So that set the site back a few weeks in google ranking.

Building the site seems that it is more important to me then it is to Korey. Maybe its a way of telling him that I miss and love him.

Kristian, my wonderful 12 year old daughter, she wants a website as well. But what she wants is something closer to myspace. When I ask her about the details and what she wants, the list is a mine long. She wants a blog, customize profiles, forum, maybe a picture gallery,,,,,,,,,,,, I thought about installing wordpress as a landing page for her domain name, and get a VBulletin license. VBulletin has a lot of features that she wants, like customized profiles and a picture gallery. But I dont know if she is doing this spur of the moment or whether its a long term interest.

My step daughter asked about building her a website, so I put together a simple SMF forum for her. Her site is The Parent Forum. I dont know how Kandi was lucky enough to find that domain name, it just kinda fell into her lap.

This weekend I am planning on going deer hunting and hopefully will get something. The weekend of November 22nd, that is Koreys weekend. The plans are to spend most of the day saturday hunting, and sunday morning. I hope he can get a deer this season. Last year he got a 6 point, so I hope he can do just as good this year.

Kristian on the other hand does not seem too interested in hunting. She would rather stay home and watch TV. But she has promised me that she will go.

No matter how many pictures I take, its never enough. When the kids go back to their moms, that is when I think about what we should have done over the past weekend. Those regrets are then turned into plans for the next time I see them. We already have plans for the second weekend of May, 2010. That is when Iron Man 2 is going to be released.