Our Retirement Home in Oregon

Our Retirement Home in Oregon
A work in progress (we're fixing it up - bit by bit). Retirement is several years off although. I'll Post updates as they happen...

Welcome to the Blog

My name is Dave and this is the first entry in my first Blog. I haven't done too much on the web in quite some time. Like most folks here, I'm a member of several user forums. Lurking mostly. Sometimes, tossing in an opinion or two - but not too often. Actually, I've had several web sites and other assorted projects on the web. I've given up on web site design as I don't seem to have the time nor the inclination. I'm focused on projects at work and entertaining my wife (and our poodles) in my leisure time. Never thought of sharing my viewpoints using a Blog. The wife says that I never talk to her. Hell, we've been married for thirty years - most of the topics have been covered many times over. She does most of the talking anyway, which is OK. Lucky for me, we have two miniature poodles to keep her 'occupied' while I'm on the laptop (which is often). So why in the hell did I start a Blog? Mostly to make comments in someone else's Blog or document the progress that we're making on our personal projects, I guess. Perhaps, I might have something interesting to say from time to time. Most likely, my best entries will be elsewhere. Sometimes I wonder the wisdom in documenting one's thoughts or opinions on the Internet. Google is becoming more powerful as a search tool... I've said too much already...

There is one thing that I can talk about. We bought a retirement house in Eastern Oregon a couple of years back. Being a 'baby boomer', I'm looking at retirement in a few years. Seven years, actually. Figured that we had better look into where retirement was. We presently live in Lake Havasu City, Arizona (in the hottest part of the state). We have lived here for fifteen years and have seen many changes. Weather forecast (during the time of this entry) is 120 Degrees plus. You get the idea... Besides it being hot here, we miss being around 'green' things. Funny thing. Once you have lived in a small town for any length of time, you tend to not miss the stresses of the daily commute or crowds in general. The wife's big concern is the 'quality' of the shopping opportunities. There is always a trade off somewhere. Lake Havasu City is a town of multiple personalities - depending on the time of year. The character of the town as diverse as the Summer and Winter seasons. Actually, the town is delightful during the Winter. Summer is something else. Summer events here revolve around the Colorado River. I get to see my fair share of the River. I work on the River. I'll probably have some comments later in the Blog about the River.

Getting back to our place in Oregon. Several years back we saw real estate prices shoot through the roof here in Havasu. Most folks here believed that it was due to the mass influx of people escaping Southern California. I could have kicked myself for not have investing in real estate before the 'boom'. The price of our own home tripled. This got me to thinking. Havasu would probably price itself outside of my own retirement income. Perhaps, we had better make a Plan 'B' for a retirement location that is more affordable. Many places were discussed between the wife and myself as we hashed our options over. We decided to look for suitable places during our Summer vacations.

It all starts with the Blog entry 'The Road to Retirement'.

Monday, July 9, 2007

Is 'Security' making us into the USSR?

Who reads this stuff anyways? I mentioned earlier that I had developed several web pages. Only one web site exists today. That is the one about our Poodles. The others were removed due to some complaints that I had from my employer about the content of the sites. Security was the reason given. I had photos on my site that some people thought were inappropriate. Photos that showed a disassembled generator, the insides of a Penstock, a panoramic view of a communications site, some high voltage transmission towers in the middle of nowhere, some river gaging sites (also in the middle of nowhere), a picture of my work bench, etc. Nothing of a real security threat, actually. No references on where the photo was taken, where the keys to the gate were hidden, which switch to turn OFF, etc. Just someone didn't like it. I wondered about the thousands of pictures floating on the internet that some tourist took of places (the same locations of where I took the majority of my shots) and the hundreds of photos that my employer has on their website for anyone to down load...

What I found interesting was the depth of the searching they had to do to locate the pages. Some of which I forgot about...

My websites are now history. They're gone. Game over.

Who's looking over your shoulder?

Posted by GageGeek at 8:43 PM

1 comment:

Big Dave T said...

Wait till they start putting up the cameras like they have over in England. (Of course, it will be to thwart the terrorists).

Thanks for visiting my blog.

July 18, 2007 at 5:00 PM

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