Welcome to site 96 at Black Rock campground,  this year's home base for Joshua Tree 2007! The mighty foursome of Dick, Chuck, Doug and Virginia took to the trails, boulders, dirt roads and washes for a long Easter weekend.     Click on the (play) button below to watch the video.  It runs just under 3 minutes. Got your speakers ON?

April 10th 2007 - My new DELL PC and Windows Vista

The old 'white box' was starting to groan under the pressure of bloated file storage,  resource-intense programs and lack of disk space. As well - the chip was just too slow to keep up with my new hobby of editing video.

Enter my new DELL XPS 410 - a wicked monster that has incredible speed and performance. The Vista operating system comes with a much improved version of Windows Movie Maker - making it unnecessary to install Pinnacle Studio.  Also Vista includes DVD authoring software that really has really impressed.  Also Windows Media Center is really nice - a poor man's TEVO - allowing you to record whatever shows come in through your cable TV, watch them later, burn them to DVD or share with friends. The Program Guide is quite elegant. Yay!

 But what computer have you ever had that is 100% problem free...?  I've had a few hiccups and thorns with this new machine including robust internet connections (I've traced this to an old router that needs replacement) and temporary system freezing.  Also -  Vista leaves you out in the cold for some older programs and devices. For instance, my trusty scanner from years ago would not work. Probably would be true for an older printer too, but my HP DeskJet works fine.

This may be a deal breaker for some of you wondering if you want to make the jump to Vista.  But I'm fine using it - I have other machines that can run anything that the new computer won't.