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Saturday, February 25, 2006
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Our buddy Pat Spampinato invited us (Becky and I) to join him for a couple of hours of flight time
from Raleigh to Franklin County on Saturday. We met at RDU International airport around 8:30, checked in, verified our flight plan, hopped in the plane, and off we went. The flight was a blast. Pat did a great job flying the Cessna 172RG and made it look so easy. We flew at around 3000 feet, and were able to stay out of the rough winds higher above us. We only encountered a slight amount of rough air, and it was hardly noticable.
Visiblity was good with overcast skies. Becky spotted some familiar spots below including the building where we work at LipoScience. We all really enjoyed seeing Falls Lake from up above.
We flew to Franklin County Airport in Louisburg, NC where Pat did a practice GPS approach. We then turned around and flew home to Raleigh (RDU). After some lunch at the local Crosswinds Cafe we headed home. Next trip.... were thinking of heading towards the coast.
Click on any of the picture thumbnails to see a larger view.
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Some pictures of Michael and Daniel King over the Christmas holidays.
Click on any of the picture thumbnails to see a larger view.
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Went tubing with the gang over Memorial Day Weekend. What a Blast! I snapped a few pictures while we were out on the lake.
Pictures below are of Daniel, Emily and John, Tracy, and my wife Becky.
Click on any of the picture thumbnails to see a larger view.
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It's been a while since I have posted anything. So here are a few pictures of some recent bass fishing
trips with my brother Trent.
Click on any of the picture thumbnails to see a larger view.
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Becky headed to Greensboro today to help Grandma Charlotte with her yard sale for Saturday.
They organized all the items for the sale and priced everything with labels. The yard sale
starts at 6:00am Saturday morning and my guess is that people will start arriving about an hour
earlier than that.
Susan and Zachary visited again on Thursday night. They brought us another box of peaches from
the North Carolina State Farmers Market in Raleigh. They also brought a nice present and card wishing me good
luck as I search for my next programming assignment. That was nice, thanks! Zachary spent some time on the laptop surfing the
web trying to find updated drivers for his Philips CDRW 400 series USB CD burner. It was starting to act
up and he searched for new Windows XP drivers to see if that might solve the problem. He found drivers, but none that were newer than
what he already had.
My brother Trent called and asked if I wanted to head out to Falls Lake for a night fishing trip. I agreed
and we arrived at the lake about 8:30pm. The weather was tempermental for the first few hours and we ended up
anchoring under an overpass bridge for about 30 minutes during a wind/rain storm. After that, the weather cleared
and it turned into a very nice night for fishing. We stayed out until around 3:00am. Now, I don't get skunked that often 
but tonite just did not seem to be my night to catch fish. This was not the case for Trent though  . He caught quite a few and
missed a few more. The biggest was a nice largemouth at about 3lbs along with 3 others ranging from
.5lbs to 1.5lbs. He released all the fish. While we were anchored under the bridge during the rain, we watched some
other fisherman pull in several crappie while fishing with lights. While we waited for the storm to clear, I tossed in a line and did manage to hook what a appeared
to be a catfish but lost him near the boat. 
For bait we used a variety of plastics including Centipede Worms, Lizards, and Shad imitations rigged either Carolina or Texas style.
Trent also had some luck fishing a Rattletrap lure. I had mixed up and brought along a batch of homemade fish attractant that I had learned about a few years ago
from my good fishing buddy Bill King. It consists of a mixture of Mineral Oil, Anise Seed Oil, Garlic, and Salt. I had
tried it several times in the past with good results but tonite it didnt seem to make that much difference to the fish.
Click on any of the picture thumbnails to see a larger view.
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Finally took up an offer to go fishing with my brother Trent at Falls Lake in his boat.
We set out in the afternoon and with the exception of a 20 minute down pour of rain, we had great weather and caught a few fish. We put in at the Upper Barton Creek Access Area
around 4:30 in the afternoon and left the lake near dark around 8:45pm. Trent caught the first fish (a largemouth) about .5 lbs within the first hour
and I caught a small crappie and a small largemouth about 30 minutes before we finished the trip.
Trent has a 1987 Wellcraft "180 Classic" and trailer and he pulls the boat behind a Ford F150 pickup. We had a great time and planned
some additional trips (possibly night fishing) for later on in the summer. We took a few pictures and you can see them below.
Other info: Anne arrived today from Birmingham, Ala. for a visit. Anne was Becky's college roomate at Auburn University. They try to get together
for a girls week or weekend at least once a year. She made the trip by herself this time and is staying until Sunday.
Also in the news our young friend Zachary called the other night and was curious if he could recover deleted pictures from his secure digital
memory card from his digital camera. It looks as if he has figured out how to do this with some free software downloaded from the web! As soon as I find out
the name of the software he used I will post info about it here for others. Good job Zachary!
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Nothing much new to write today so I will post some pics of a fishing trip that Becky and I made to Fort Fisher several weeks ago.
It was a very bright sunny hot day and we caught flounder (just shy of keeper size), bluefish, and croakers. Lots of croakers. We saw several
different coastal birds including our favorite - the Oyster Catcher. We also saw a small alligator in the road at the entrance to the park. We brought home enough
croakers to cook for dinner one night. The trip was great fun. We will definitely head back again in August for larger flounder since the drive is only a couple of hours from Raleigh.
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Happy birthday Grandma Charlotte!
Happy 4th of July!
Its been a while since the last update. I have been busy working on several projects and
have pretty much neglected the Blog.
Finally got around to backing up my network machines at home. With the help of the new
52x Memorex CD burner, Ghost, and a couple of SCSI tape backup drives I had laying around
we got it mostly accomplished.
Still writing lots of code mostly in VB6 and PHP. I have several projects I am polishing up
now to one day post online for FREE with source included. More later, I have to go put the dogs
up since they go literally crazy barking when the 4th of July fireworks start booming. And they
are booming right now. Cya.
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