Moved In! - ish

And we're moved. The move went great. We had a lot of help from David's Family (Thank you all so much!) However, when we got to the new place we ran into a couple problems, but I'll spare you the drama. That's just one of the joys that goes along with moving right? Things have worked themselves out though and we are pretty much settled in.

Moving from a 1bed/1bath to a 2bed/2bath we are still amazed at how much space we have! And how much stuff we keep adding to our "Need to Buy for House" list.

On a completely separate note we had a great Christmas! David and I had Christmas off (I know weird right? We didn't have to work a holiday?) which was wonderful because we got to relax, eat some great food, and enjoy spending time with David's family. It's a bummer not being able to visit my family as well, but it was nice to talk to them on the phone.

Now we have New Year's Eve to look forward to and a whole new year! How the heck did that happen?! 2011 flew by I swear!

Well happy holidays and see you next year!

Quick List

And we're behind...again. Here is a list of things that took place since our last post.

 

• It was my birthday! Woot! 
• Got Heart - Attacked and Kidnapped for some ice cream by my Primary Class and Mother-in-law
• Halloween - we were at work, but did carve a pumpkin
• Trip to Utah - Visited lots of family and had a blast
• Thanksgiving - we were at work again, but did celebrate on Friday instead with more family and cousins
• Found a new place to live - we're moving to Tempe
• I finished this semester of school!

My Hallway and Front Door

My Primary Girls

Our Pumpkin

Sibling Triple Date

Cousin Reunion

Our Summer Vacation

In September we went on vacation to New York! We have some cousins that live in Manhattan that we wanted to visit and they were nice enough to let us come visit. Here are the highlights of our trip:

Day 1 -

• Hung out with Janelle
• Ate yummy cupcakes at Magnolia's
• Went to the Natural History Museum
• Tour of Central Park by Janelle

 Day 2 -

• Time Square, Rockefeller Plaza, New York Public Library
• Hard Rock Cafe with Kara, Frank, and Brian
• Listening to Bill open his mission call
• Junior's Cheesecake - nothing else even compares to how good this cheesecake is

Day 3 -

• Climbed the Castle in Central Park
• Went to The Metropolitan Museum
• Relaxed and played frisbee on the Great Lawn in Central Park
• Saw the Broadway, "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," starring Daniel Radcliffe - Yes, we were about 8 feet away from Harry Potter 

 Day 4 -

• We went to Coney Island - We ate epic corn dogs and braved near death experiences riding the rides. Literally.
• Walked the Brooklyn Bridge 
• Tried to see the 9/11 Memorial but all we saw were cops and the Wall Street Protesters
• Went to Battery Park
• Ate at Shake Shack - possibly the best cheeseburger I have ever had
• Watched the most embarrassing BYU game, but at least the company was great!

 Day 5 -

• We went to Connecticut to visit more family - some of whom we had never met
• We played lots of games and got to know each other better

Day 6 -

• We purchased/scarfed some great ice cream from The Creamery in Connecticut
• Walked Riverside park
• Played games with Kara, Frank, Janelle, and Chris

    We had a great vacation. It was so much fun getting together with our cousins that we don't get to see very often since they live on the east coast. I wish we lived closer. Kara and Frank were so nice to let us stay with them. And Janelle gave us a great tour of Central Park's hot spots and suggestions of must eat places.

This was definitely one of the best Summer Vacations we have ever had.

First Desktop Built!

I've always enjoyed taking things apart and seeing what makes them "tick", but lately I've taken this to a whole new level with building computers.  I bought my desktop from ibuypower.com, which has a very intuitive way of letting people decide which components to put in their own PC, then the company would assemble it and ship it to you.  Since I have been so pleased with my computer, I got to thinking about starting a side project of doing the same thing, except locally.  This was the beginning of Copper Custom. 

As my first project, I ordered parts for an inexpensive home computer from Newegg.com and got to building!  There was a sale on the case/motherboard/power supply combo, and so I worked from there finding inexpensive parts to compliment them.  In the end, I ordered the following parts:

• Intel Celeron E3400 dual core 2.6 GHz Processor
• Kingston 4GB DDR3 1066 RAM
• Western Digital Caviar Blue 320 GB Hard Drive
• CD/DVD Burner 
• Shuttle Case with Power Supply and Micro ATX motherboard

The motherboard came with on-board video, so luckily it was one less thing to add to the price list.  The total price came to $256, which I think is darn good for the quality equipment.  The parts arrived today while I was at work, and I got started after getting home.  To my surprise, it only took about an hour and a half to get it ready to turn on!  I was expecting a bit more of a challenge I think, but all-in-all, the thing works perfectly.  I started out by testing the memory and processor with Memtest86, and it passed with flying colors.  After that, I loaded the free operating system Ubuntu and played around with it a bit to make sure that everything was working properly.

 

So if you know anyone that needs a quality home computer, you can let them know that I'm selling this one for the price of the parts or $256.  Also, I can build other home computers and gaming computers, all custom.  You can reach me at the project email coppercustom@gmail.com

I'm excited to continue with this project and hopefully enjoy building many different systems!