Wow, been a long time...
My wife still frequents the boards once in a while, and she told me there was a thread about Mark looking for me.
Hey Mark! I haven't forgotten about you, and sure appreciated the help on the rollbars.
I got out of the reef tank because we have a 1500s.f. house and the A/C couldn't keep up in the summer... add to that the stress of the hurricanes this past few years, well you get the idea. I was VERY glad I didn't have it this past year as it turns out, 5 days w/out power. I had a generator, but gas was very very short, and no way to keep the tank cool (house was what, 90+ during the days), I would have lost EVERYTHING.
Mark, did you sell Blanco? What a shame, and I never got to take a spin in it. I have timing belt change and I'm trying to scrape up enough $ to get a Toda flywheel and clutch to put in, my 2001 has the infamous shudder due to bad clutch surface material from the factory.
Lately, my extra $ has been in buying movies and figurines, yes I'm a geek at heart. I have three 1/4 sideshow figurines with two or three more on order, and I'm over 400 movies and I converted a bedroom into a home-theater room complete with a 120" screen and 720P projector.
Work's been VERY busy this past year, our company was bought, and merged with another large company, and it's goign to be be happening AGAIN this year, we will be a .5B company by the end of this year, supposedly. This all means I have been working my fingers off.
This past fall/winter I installed my own pool, from start to finish. There's a bunch of pics here:
http://www.shagman.org/homes/DIY-pool/index.html I did all the work myself, only used contractor for 1) digging the hole 2) laying pool bottom and 3) concrete deck. It ended up costing right around $16k or so total, for a 16x32 pool, and took about 4 months to do. We ended up saving about 5-6k total, after you factor in the extra plumbing I put in, automated salt-chlorination/mineral dispenser, fancy pool cleaner, etc. There's still a lot of landscaping to do and I still have to put up about 30' or so of privacy fence.
Phew, that was a lot of typing! I miss you guys, but it breaks my heart to see reef tanks now, so I don't think I could bring myself to another meeting heh. Deanna and I will be building a new house in 4-5 years probably, and I'll be putting in a standby generator on it's own pad, a seperate fishroom w/ standalone A/C/air-exchange, and a LARGE reef tank
I hope the club will still be around when I get back into the hobby, there's a great group of local folks that I'd love to get back into touch with!