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A happy, and productive weekend

This has to have been one of the best and most productive weekends at my house in a while. Friday night was fairly quiet.

On Saturday I slept in until 10:00, read a few blogs, created a new blog roll, and then my wife and I went to a friends house to pick up some new furniture for our granddaughter to be. We got a new changing table, an armoir, and a crib. Well, it's not actually new, but it's a matching set, and it's in like-new condition.

After that, we went to the hardware store and bought a tarp. A nice, big, 20' by 25' white, heavy duty tarp. We brought it home and I was all set to put it up on the "temporary" building that we bought several years ago, a large metal pole structure that originally came with a white tarp roof, white tarp sides, and white tarp end panels.

When I first bought my race car, even before I knew it would be a race car, I stored it inside that building. When I started racing, I moved it out to a shop that I rented on a friends property in Maple Valley. We then used the shelter for garden tools, bikes, and our trash cans.

The years weren't kind to that structure though, and the old material gradually rotted away after years of exposure to wind and rain and snow. We replaced a few panels here and there, but a really massive windstorm pretty much tore it all away.

The new tarp completely covers both sides and the top of the structure. It's one piece, staked to the ground every 18" through the gromets in the sides and lashed to the pole structure by a rope threaded through the gromets on both ends, every 18", and wrapped around the pole. I'ts a perfect fit.

Two more, smaller tarps will cover each end, and pretty much ensure that anything I put in there will stay dry and protected from the elements. That's important, since our friends have both died and I'm going to have to move my racecar and tools out of the shop when their estate sells.

Today was another fun and interesting day. This afternoon my wife and I went to Big Lots, a discount and closeout store. We went to get a gift for our oldest son, sort of a combination Easter and Birthday present. He wanted an MP3 player, and Big Lots had a SanDisk C140 on sale for $39.99, or about $30.00 off.

While we were in Big Lots my wife wanted to get some peat pots to plant pumpkin seeds in. As we were wandering through that section we saw a couple of large garden gazebos. There was a 10' by 12' one for about $189.00, and it included screened sides. Then we saw another one, a 10' by 10' one that would be perfect for our deck, and it was $169.00. After thinking about it a bit we decided to get the smaller one.

The store didn't have the MP3 player we wanted though. They had sold out. My wife had the clerk call a couple of the other local stores to see if any had one left. What do you know, the Fairwood store had one.

There was just one problem. It was a return. The customer that bought it complained that he couldn't transfer his music onto it. I figured it was probably user error, and told them if the 30 day warranty was still good I'd buy it. They said it was, so we took off for the other store and bought it.

We came home and I assembled the gazebo. It took a while, what with my dropping the washers and nuts and bolts about every third or fourth time. Finally it was assembled though and the top was on. Just in time for the rain.

I sat out on my deck for a while enjoying being mostly dry while it rained. The top actually leaks a bit, but it wasn't designed for use in the rain so I'm not particularly alarmed by that. Anyway, when it dries out we're going to scotchguard it and that should probably keep it from leaking much for a while.

We mainly got it for shade during the hotter summer months. It's certainly going to be good for that. The screens will keep the mosquitos and other pests away when we want to eat out on the deck too.

After enjoying my new gazebo for a while I went upstairs to make sure the MP3 player worked. It did, but I couldn't get it to download MP3s from my computer. I played with the drivers. That didn't help. I formatted the device. That didn't help. In fact, it didn't even work. The software said it was formatted, but apparently it wasn't really.

I switched USB modes on it. Now I found that it had content, but that the content was corrupted. I couldn't delete the corrupted content either. I was really starting to get frustrated.

I had checked the manual. I had followed the instructions. I had tried syncing it by dragging files onto the device. I had tried syncing using Windows Media Player. Everything failed. I was beginning to understand why it had been returned to the store.

I decided to try a few other features. For one, it has a record mode that will let you record voice messages. I tried it out. That worked just fine. It also has a built-in FM radio. That was working fine too. So did the record feature that lets you record what you're listening to on the radio for later playback.

It seemed to me that if those functions were working that the unit was probably not defective entirely. When I tryed to sync again from Windows Media Player, I noticed that the recordings I had made on the MP3 Player actually showed up on the device according to Windows Media Player.

I still wasn't able to download songs onto the MP3 player though. I tried opening the device like a disc drive again. This time there was a LOT of stuff that showed up. Folders that I had never created, but all of them were empty. I was able to delete them all, but I still couldn't copy music onto the device.

Frustrated, I went downstairs for a while, and then, ate a fabulous Easter dinner. We had scalloped potatoes, cottage cheese and roast turkey. What a meal! My wife is an incredible cook. There wasn't anything left.

After dinner, it was back to the MP3 player. I was able to copy video onto it. I copied one of my drag racing clips onto it. I was able to play it on my PC from the MP3 player. I was able to move it from one folder to another on the MP3 player. I was able to delete it. I just wasn't able to copy music onto the MP3 player.

Finally I switched the USB mode another time. Back and forth... forth and back... and so on...

This time when I hooked up the USB connector there was a file system on the device and it was clean. No corruption. I copied an MP3 file that I had ripped from one of my CDs to the AUDIO folder. It took almost no time at all to transfer. I disconnected the MP3 player. I turned it on and listened to the music I had copied.

I erased the music I had transferred to it, and had my son come in to check it out. I showed him how it worked. I showed him the various features. We transferred a few albums onto his MP3 player. We took one of his favorite CDs, ripped it to MP3 and transferred it on.

The thing works perfectly now. I suspect that the previous customer had tried to copy a large folder structure of music onto it and disconnected it while it was still in the process of synchronising the data. That left the system in a corrupted state. My efforts at cleaning it up were successful though and Zach's happy with his gift.

He even thanked us both. I told you it was a happy and productive weekend.

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