Greg's General Store

Yesterday was the 2008 Grape Stomp at Irvin House Vineyards. As I mentioned before, yours truly was the master hotdog chef for the event. Well the festival was a huge success. Last year we had about 700 people attend and this year we estimated that there were around 1200 people there. I got up early to get everything ready. I headed into town and got ice and then topped off my tank with gas. The place where I stopped had fresh Duncan Doughnuts and you guessed it, Great Coffee. I was in heaven. I spent most of the morning setting up and got everything ready around 11am which was when the bottom fell out and we had a heavy thunder shower. It only lasted about an hour though and I arrived around 12:00 in time to light the grill and dry everything off. No harm done. The festival was supposed to start at 2:00 but people started arriving early and we started selling hotdogs right away. By 1:00 the sun was out and it was starting to heat up. They had sack races for the kids, face painting, ba...

What this country really needs is a great cup of coffee. I don’t know what has happened to Americans but it seems almost impossible to get a real cup of coffee anymore. This week alone I had numerous failed attempts to get a good cup of coffee and I am about fed up. I am contemplating moving to Columbia just to get some real coffee. Meet my new roomies: Monday, my coffee was old and burnt. It had obviously been brewed many hours before I got it and it tasted nasty. Tuesday I took the day off and used those little bags to make my coffee. Little did I know that it would be the best coffee I would have all week. Wednesday, I got my coffee and it looked fresh enough. When I took the first sip though I realized that it wasn’t the house blend, it was French Roast and it was strong enough to wake the dead. I went back in and exchanged it for another cup and this time I smelled it to make sure it was the house blend. It smelled good so I headed down the road. About a mile into my drive, I took...

Last night I took a few more photo's with my new camera. I really like it a lot. What I got was a Sony Cyber-shot DCS-H3. It is really easy to use and I like all the features it has. It is 8.1 Mega Pixels, with a 10X optical zoom. It has a stabilization feature which is nice for those of us with not so steady hands. I got it from a website called Dealcatcher.com which is where I got my laptop computer. I shopped around and they had the best deal. So here are some photo's that I took last night in mixed light. Here is a not so cooperative Tufted Titmouse. I guess he was shy and didn't want his picture taken. The chickadee was a much better subject although he looked a little annoyed. This is one of my caster bean plants. It is about 6 ft tall but it should be around 10 ft by now. All this rain that we have had has brought out the mushrooms. I sure wish they were edible. Who knows they might be but I doubt it. I still have my little fish fountain and it is almost completely ...

And the answer is .....My computer is toast. :( I gave it my best shot and was unable to get rid of this nasty virus. After about 10 hours of work, I finally gave up and decided to consult a professional. I called my computer manufacturer and they said they knew what it was and could fix it but I would have to pay for their maintenance plan since my warranty had run out. I agreed thinking that it would be cheaper than buying a new computer. So I paid for the service and then called a technician who was going to help me out. After 3 hours on the phone, he gave up and said he couldn't fix it either. He said my only option was to reload my computer using the reboot disc and guess what? I can't find it. Plan B: I am going to have a person at work try to fix it. If he gets it fixed I will keep the maintenance plan but if he doesn't get it fixed, I will have to buy a new computer and I won't be buying the same brand so I won't need the maintenance plan. If that happens, ...

I hate to tell you all but I am not myself today. I am not the happy go lucky person I usually am. Today I am mad. No make that angry. No make that really really angry. Let me tell you why. Last night my son was trying to get on the computer. When he tried to log onto the internet, he got an error message. After a few tries we felt that something was seriously wrong so we decided to quit trying and try again today. I began trying to fix my computer early this morning and I spent almost 8 hours with no luck. I did find out that I have a virus and after many hours I discovered what it was. It is called the CNN virus and if you haven't heard of it you might want to look it up to be on the lookout for it. It is a trojan virus that attaches itself to a CNN message and once you get it, it is hard to get rid of. There is a remedy for it but whenever I try to go get it, the virus leads me to some other site and I end up getting frustrated. I think I am going to have to get professional hel...

Ok you probably think that it just boils down to jealousy but I do have other reasons for not watching the Olympics. I could go into the usual reasons like politics, boycotts, steroid use, waste, or child competition but I won’t. In my opinion those are reasons enough but I feel that they only mask the true reason I don’t like the Olympics. Although I have many reasons I also have many solutions. Like I tell people that work for me. Don’t come to me with a problem unless you also have a solution. Let me cover the problems first. They are way too competitive. I mean what happened to the “games” part? Aren’t they supposed to be Olympic “Games”? Games are supposed to be fun. Look it up, you will see that fun is in the definition. Here it is. Game: An activity that people participate in, together or on their own, for fun. I see that they have added some other definitions that left out the word “fun”. I am not surprised. The Olympics are no more fun that T-ball is to a little kid. It is all...

Jim Cantori is not on his way to South Carolina. For those of you who are Weather Channel fans like myself, you know that as Jim goes so goes the hurricanes. It looks like Fay will stay in Florida. Great news for us but not so good news for people in Florida. They are already soaked and this may cause some flooding. Hey speaking of the Weather Channel does anyone else remember that they predicted the driest year in history this year. Wrong again. And as far as Hurricane Fay they are saying that she is unpredictable. I have news for you guys (and girls) they are all unpredictable. Well unless you are God. So in other news I purchased a new digital camera. It should arrive in about 5 days. I will tell you more about it when it arrives. I hate to brag before I get it just in case it turns out to be a piece of junk. I think it will be a good one though. I will tell you it is a Sony. But for now I just got some pictures back so let me share them with you. I took these with my trusty Penta...

It's a dog's life. Well if you are a cat it isn’t. Talk about having it made. Tigger Tiger finally calmed down and doesn’t hunt as much as he used to. I know the birds are relieved about that. I know the frogs in my fish pond are happy too. I took the day off last Friday to go fishing. We caught tons of fish but unfortunately, they were all too small so we didn’t have any to eat. It was a fun day though and I stayed busy taking the small fish off the lines. I am happy to see that the fish population seems to be rebounding. The wildlife people wouldn’t have you believe that but I am catching more fish these days than I used to 10 and 20 years ago. Of course it may be that I am just better at it. Watch out Roland Martin. All I need is a bigger motor so I can get to the fish faster. Every good fisherman knows that you can’t catch fish if your boat won’t do 60 MPH. I had to get up early that day to get bait. It was still dark and I easily caught a bunch of shrimp and small minnows ...

Class was a little boring as I expected. The problem was my fault though. I need new glasses so I couldn't see the board. There was a computer in front of each of us but something was wrong with my password so the first day I was unable to log on and follow along. Then the second day, I had some big wigs sitting near me so I couldn't do any playing. I had to actually pay attention. Can you believe that? There were 15 people in this class and several of them complained about everything. This class was supposed to tell us our new job responsibilities but several people did nothing but complain. There was one in particular who asked those "what if" questions and kept trying to stump the instructor. He reminded me of an old George Carlin skit where the Catholic kids were trying to stump the priest. They were talking about how in the Catholic faith, it is a sin not to go to confession each week. George's question was: What if you were on a ship out in the ocean? And to...

I'm off work for two whole days. Actually I am only going to training but it is two days away from the office and you and I know that spells two days of vacation. The bad news is that this training is in Columbia SC. For the lucky ones who have never visited Columbia, you aren't missing much. Their motto is "Columbia.... We aren't that far from where you really want to be". And it's true. Only two hours to the east is Charleston. Two hours to the west are the Blue Ridge Mountains. Two hours north is Charlotte NC which has a nice theme park and two hours South is Augusta which has some great golf. So what is in Columbia you ask. I guess you could be interested in the State Capitol. And yes there is a College but we aren't Gamecock's fans? And there are lots of businesses including our corporate office which is why we are going there. Other than that and a few resturants there isn't much. However if you are wanting to visit SC and don't know wher...

I am happy to report that my blog seems to be recovering. It is now only missing two comments that I made as tests and I can live with that. The missing comments all seem to be associated with a post that I made on August 6th. I don’t know any significance to that date so I am not sure why this weird thing happened. If anything weird was going to happen, it should be today. Am I the only one who realized that today is 8-8-08? I made a note of it at 8 am this morning but nothing really happened so I let it go. It was like that Y2K thing. What a let down. I am also feeling better now so I am on the road to recovery myself. I have had a stomach ache for several days now. No I didn’t go to a doctor because I know more than doctors so I prefer to self diagnose my own illnesses. Right now I have it pinned down to one of three things. First: Food poisoning. I ate some cantaloupe that I believe was grown alongside those bad peppers. I am almost certain of it. Second: Stomach virus. If this is ...