MaximumRD

Whew! Caught up one rest for now, slept the day away but caught up on over due sleep, from 9am this morning until 6:30 pm I got 9 1/2 hrs rest. I was exhausted from staying up longer than I normally would so my wife could slumber worry free, we are still sleeping in shifts to remain vigilant for wildfire alerts to either prepare for evacuation or simply evacuate, just being extra cautious as fires continue here in Kelowna BC but thankfully there has been no changes in several hours with even some evac alerts in some areas being demoted to simply stand by, hoping this means they are gaining ground. Been a rough few days but otherwise still trying to just live normally, enjoying hobbies, indoors mostly of course due to poor air quality from smoke and ash but as I tend to be a home anyway that is not too unusual. Hoping the next few days we can eventually unpack our "Evac essentials" so I can finally feel at ease. My wonderful wife prepared for me a nice dinner and dessert another my long slumber so now just back in front of the desktop to distract myself and try to unwind. 😬 Chorizo sandwiches with fresh tomatoes for dinner. Enjoying for dessert, straight from the orchard, Glo-haven Peaches. We have several varsities here in the Okanagan, this is juicy sweet and delicious one. Previously we had Champaign variety. 😋

Ernie Reyes Jr.

Alien Nighthawks by Casey Callender.

Thanks for posting that video! Brought back great memories obviously, gave me great insight and if I am honest I got a little chocked up when they announced the closing and seeing that woman dressed as a Vulcan holding back tears.

My wife and I got married in Vegas 20 years ago, seems it was the same attraction so of course we had to go on the tour. My images of this are in a Facebook album so I will post them here as well. 😎Right, it was an album I created called our Star Trek Adventure, you will see my lovely wife with a Ferengi and my favorite me with Klingons, now he is in tall heeled boots and is a pretty intimidating figure but looking at his face I don't think he got as many with my height (6 Ft 4) and stature, I was much heavier back in those days😝But they were all wonderful and we had a great time! I tried to locate our tickets / passes to take a picture and post but I am not able to find at this time. Here are all my pictures though. Wish the quality was better but it's what we had at the time. You can probably tell I was having the time of my life as I never experienced anything like it before, indeed my relationship with my wife opened up a world of travel and lifestyle that was impossible before.

Welcome Walter, hope you enjoy your time here. 😎

Family / Friends FYI regarding our current status of the surrounding fires here and near Kelowna. - The alerts have slowed down significantly and the brave firefighters built a firewall on knox Mountain over night to keep the fire from spreading into Central Kelowna. Otherwise same, we remain at the ready and constantly monitor throughout the day, we won't be caught off guard as my wife and I are sleeping in shifts so no chance will miss any alert. Lastly, fyi the evac center is very close to us should it ever become necessary. Heavy smoke, poor air quality see image, this is our downtown which would be about a 20 minute walk from our position) but nothing we've not experienced before, so we have our air purifiers running 24/7. My wife and I are a great team and have everything within our control covered so let's just all hope winds and circumstances stay on our side. Thanks to all that have messaged or commented your concerns and best wishes. - Rob.

Not an "adventure" or story I prefer to be writing about but sharing just as a distraction and well ASKING FOR GOOD WILL AND WISHES. Just wanted to share and also IF you don't see me around for a bit this may be why, just wanted to keep my friends here in the loop.... You need only google KELOWNA + Fires to know things are a little scary here at the moment. I've posted on Facebook and Twitter and messaged close friends and family mostly to assure people, media typically posts scary video and images, DON'T GET ME WRONG I am not playing it down, just need to look at things logically and practically and provide true details. AS OF THIS MOMENT AS I TYPE THIS where WE reside in central Kelowna we are not on evacuation or alert. We are also mid thunderstorms and high winds which can change that status in a moments notice. West Kelowna is across the lake from us, a 5 minute drive across a bridge, they have had thousands evacuated as fires are out of control there. Melissa and I will sleep on shifts so one of us can always monitor the current status. ALSO: we have up to the minute alerts sent to us via messages and Email services, we are aware of local evacuation centers and we already have essentials and necessities packed up and ready to go as well as relatives that we can drive to in a worse case scenario. So there is nothing more to do or prepare it's just a waiting game and hoping things get under control. So that's it my friends, just wanted to vent, outside our balcony window skies are grey with smoke and you can smell it, we have our air filters going as well. These are two images, this is not to alarm you, just for context and to show I am not over reacting, basically the couple sitting on the bench are in City Park and this is a view of the fires raging across the lake late last night, a situation that has not improved, form where we are I could walk down to City Park in 20 minutes. The second image also from last night shows the building and downtown in areas of my city in contrast to the fires across the lake. Overnight there has appeared some spot fires and they are growing ON OUR SIDE likely from embers that floated across, these fires are growing as we get more evacuation alerts but that is travelling east of the city opposite direct from us SO FAR. THAT IS MY STORY, just trying to stay calm and cool headed but alert and ready. Worst fires here ever and oddly the 20th anniversary of historic Kelowna Mountain fires. This is life in British Columbia, beautiful here but man this is something I never had to worry about living in the big city of Toronto Ontario where we came here from 20 years ago. 🧯😬 This MAP breaks down a recent status. BLUE MARK is approx where WE reside, yellow is on alert, RED on Evac. SEND GOOD THOUGHTS AND VIBES things turn around and we don't actually have to evacuate.

The Batman by @JaimeJonesart

My current iPad mini Home Screen featuring Jack “King” Kirby. 😎

My current Desktop Lenovo Legion PC - 😎

It's MUTINY ! Good stuff JUSTIN ! 😁Unrelated pic I found amusing 😝

Our first time but certainly not our last Empire Crepe 😎👍Highly recommended, every type of Crêpes for your enjoyment and nice atmosphere and wonderful service. #empirecrepe

Site looks impressive so far. One thing though, lots of mention of Retro game ROMS however I didn't seem to see anything to indicate the platform they were intended for? I mean I know it's for Jaguar obviously but a visitor unaware might not realize it. Now I assume it's just an oversight as it's still a work in progress but it's just feedback in case it was overlooked.

Looks awesome. Hopefully I will get round to playing it one day, if so will definitely have to be PC version because I have none of the recent consoles. EXTRA - since I just did this and I am here: Just updated to latest Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 25926 (Canary BUILD) in VMware. I only run Preview or Beta tiers natively but in Virtual I tinker with Developer and Canary Channels.

Honestly, I fumble my way through this stuff and between stubbornness and a little luck I just manage😂 I'm no wiz and such things really and even worse at instructing. Let me share the details on how I managed this "magic" thus far 😝 Sadly, as long as it's not on the list of officially supported hardware you would be better off either upgrading your CPU or replacing it completely as it's rather tricky to say the least, at the moment I'm still running Win 11 but the only reason I am not getting the constant nagging message in updates is because I am in the Windows Insiders program, signed in with a Microsoft account so my installed Windows version is an "Insiders Preview". Sort of a work around as Microsoft graciously allows us end users to be "beta Testers" IE: Guinea pigs of sort but of course if I opt out OR once the current subscription period ends and the next full version is released according to Microsoft the only option will be to "upgrade hardware OR downgrade OS back to Windows 10" which of course is not an realistic option for us hence the new PC. 🙄 FYI regarding official Windows 10 support "Windows 10 will reach end of support on October 14, 2025. The current version, 22H2, will be the final version of Windows 10, and all editions will remain in support with monthly security update releases through that date." So yeah, I am currently pretty much playing leap frog with MS, I WILL keep Windows 11 on the CyberPowerPC as long as I can manage through whatever means mostly because I have everything perfect and setup and optimized and customized to perfection but I didn't want to have to rely on it daily as that support could literally be pulled at anytime. That's not to say it will stop working etc, but it WILL mean eventually the end up security updates etc. INDEED a few month back during a major "feature update" during the process of installing the latest revision I actually got a message half way through install that the update could not continue since it was "unsupported hardware" even though I had been running Win11 just fine, great actually up to that point (don't even get me started on my belief that MS is simply in bed with hardware manufacturers or getting kickbacks to suggest certain hardware is no longer valid, my Ryzen 5 1500x CPU is more than powerful enough imho). I WAS NOT AMUSED, fortunately I just restored my last OS image, I image the OS quite regularly, so in no time I restored it to the last revision before the update. NOW THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART, this was when I thought well maybe I could simply go to my Update settings and enroll in the Insiders Program, I've done this for many years with both natively installed and virtual installs of Windows and really have never had an issue with the lowest tier of the Insiders Editions, so PREVIEW level, even BETA level has never really presented a problem though MS does not recommend using that on your main PC, hey I cannot be told what to do, I'm a rebel 😎. Sadly, the INSIDER option was not showing as available, likely BECAUSE of my unsupported hardware status. Being the stubborn sort, certainly more stubborn then smart, after much research and googling, basically I was able to go into windows SERVICES and re-enable Windows Insiders service, if I recall I may have also had to edit or delete some registry entries but the end result was Insiders option was now present and after signing in with my MS account and a reboot later I was enrolled, checked updates and that very same update that previously refused downloaded and installed now problem, sigh of relief, rebooted and was now running the latest current revision of Windows 11 Insiders Preview. Since then all updates have installed fine including even a couple more feature updates. I've no idea if or when that machine will once again refuse to install a new revision, I suspect if / when that time comes I re attempt the same steps again, worse comes to worse and there simply is no fooling the MS servers or getting around it there ARE programs that let's just say gives one more control over specific updates, basically letting you suppress feature updates while I think still receiving critical / security updates, this is NOT the same as the PAUSE UPDATES for 1 week in update settings but programs developed by people smarter than I that I don't like to use but I will if it's between that and downgrading back to 10, since it's no longer the main PC and I run my own security apps and image the OS regularly it's not the biggest loss.

It's been a minute so here is latest. This is our new Lenovo Legion desktop PC, replacing the previous CyberPowerPC (and by replace I mean it's in the bedroom and now dedicated 100% as my Hobby / tinkering / do whatever the hell I want with PC 😝😂) which is great, the old CyberPower had a Nvidia 1060 6GB + Ryzen 5 1500x however it not being Windows 11 hardware supported (OH I am running it regardless it's just that the CPU is not "officially" supported 🙄) only option since we need a dependable /reliable and compliant main desktop, not just as our hub of our computing needs but my wife needs it as a backup for remote IT work etc, was to either upgrade the CPU to the next Ryzen on the supported list but we opted to instead just get a new machine all together, because the CyberPower was going on 5 years old and I am not as, let's say enthusiastic about doing CPU replacements between eye issues and just not having the patience for tedious work anymore. So after searching a couple weeks found a nice deal on this Lenovo Legion Desktop which even gave us an "upgrade" with compliant hardware including a 12th Gen core i7-12700 + Nvidia 3060 8GB ! Maybe not that impressive but as nice as the previous machine was and still is this one seems to kick it's butt in benchmark comparisons. So win - win I guess, no complaints.

Visiting family up at Big White Ski Resort well can’t complain about the accommodations. May add more images later. My brother in law STEWART STEWARTS WIFE Christina