December 24, 2024 / admin / 0 Comments
Just a short message to wish all my wonderful readers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 2024 has been an exciting year in both the world of simulation gaming as well as in my own personal life. Looking back, it’s hard to believe the major feat my wife and I completed with the move to Texas. Buying the new house, selling the old house and the whole out-of-state moving process was both a challenge and exciting endeavor that neither of us are wishing to repeat anytime soon.
I’m taking the next couple of weeks to just chill and relax and enjoy simulation gaming. I have a lot to catch up on since both Farming Simulator 25 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 have released in the past month or so and I’ve only had a few hours here and there to enjoy. Needless to say, both of these new titles have been exciting and challenge which I hope to discuss in the new year.
So until then….and once again, I do sincerely wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I hope you have some spare time to enjoy your favorite sim game and also spend quality time with family and friends.
Goodbye 2024 and hello 2025.
Jerry
December 17, 2024 / admin / 0 Comments
We’re quickly closing in on having completed our first full month of living in Texas and in our new home. We’ve been steadily unpacking and organizing the best we can over the past few weeks and while I wish I could say all the boxes are unpacked and everything is done, it just simply isn’t the case. But the vast majority is done and we’re OK with that.
Most likely we will have boxes in the garage and a few unpacked boxes in the closets for a few months. This is just the way it goes when undertaking a large move like this. We could stress over this, but life is too short to worry about the little things and like I said, we’re OK with the progress we’ve made.
Unfortunately a lot of my time the past few weeks have been dealing with my dad. Since we’ve been in Texas (just 4 weeks now) he’s been in and out of the hospital several times. But this is one of the many reasons why we moved when we did and I’ll try to spend as much time as I can with him as I never know when it might be the last.
All-in-all we’re very happy here. The weather has been amazing with day-time high temps in the upper 70’s. The grass has stopped growing and a few weeks ago I put down some winter formula fertilizer. Hopefully we’ll have some moisture in the spring and the grass will come back nice and green.
I did manage to unpack all my gaming gear and have spent some free time flying and farming. I’ll have an update on my impressions of Farming Simulator 25 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 in the new year.
As Christmas is quickly approaching, this most likely will be my last blog posting in 2024. I look forward to the new year and writing more about simulation gaming for all you to read. Until then, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Safe New Year!
Thanks for reading! I’ll return soon in the new year.
Jerry
November 26, 2024 / admin / 0 Comments
Hello to all my loyal readers. Before I tell you all about my brand new and what will be my very first John Deere, allow me to provide some background. As many of you will know, my grandfather (my dad’s dad) was a farmer. Unfortunately, I never really got to know my grandfather as he passed away when I was about 18 months old. But I’ve heard enough stories through the years and before he retired in the early 60’s he was a firm believer in the John Deere brand. He even used many of the horse/mule drawn implements and all were John Deere.
When I was a kid in my pre-teens all the way through my late teens I mowed yards to earn extra money. It started out with just my own yard and then around the time I turned 13-14, I picked up several extra yards. During the summer months I would typically have 3-5 yards which I mowed on an almost weekly basis. Of course, I was using an old style push mower at first and then around the time I was 15-16 I bought a nice self-propelled mower which certainly helped a lot as some of the yards had a bit of elevation.
Once I graduated from high school and moved off to college, my grass cutting days were over as I mostly lived in apartments where needing to mow wasn’t required. At this time of my life and after having mowed yards for many years, I really didn’t miss it much.
When my wife and I bought our home in Denver in 2004, we didn’t need to do any mowing as our HOA or Home Owners Association did this for us. Plus our yard is relatively small. However, with our new home in Texas, while we’re still living in an HOA environment…we the homeowner is fully responsible for our own yard maintenance.
Decisions, Decisions…
Our house in Texas is on a fairly descent sized corner lot which measures about 12,000 sq ft which is about a quarter of an acre. Not huge….but also not like the postage stamp size lot of our Denver home. Of course, we have many options. First, we could hire a yard maintenance company which would mow our grass or we could hire a teenager looking to earn a few extra dollars to do it. In the 1980’s I typically charged $10 – $15 per yard and depending on the size of the yard and the complexity of the yard, it would only take me about an hour for each. Earning $10-15 per hour in the 1980’s was pretty darn good money. However, in today’s world and for our new house in Texas this equates to about $60 per hour.
It’s Not About The Money
No, it really isn’t. I really have no issue in paying someone $60 dollars an hour to perform a job that I either don’t have the time to do or physically can’t do. But in this case, I’m still a young 58 and believe I can still maintain my yard for at least another 10 years, perhaps even longer with the right tools. So I’ve decided to purchase a mower and will do the work myself. But what should I buy? What do I really need?
If I were younger, the size of yard we have at the new house in Texas could easily be done with a regular motorized push mower and probably wouldn’t take more than two hours to mow, trim and blow. But as it’s been 40 years since I’ve mowed grass (or there abouts) I’ve decided to treat myself to a riding mower. But not just any riding mower….
My First John Deere
Yes, as the subject line teases, I’ve purchased a very nice John Deere Zero-Turn riding mower. I did spend several weeks researching options between all the top brands of mowers, but chose John Deere for many reasons.
First, if you drive 10 minutes into the country away from the city where I live you’ll find on both sides of the road and as far as you can see huge fields of corn, wheat and cotton. The farmers working these fields are all running John Deere equipment. Within 20 minutes of me there are two huge John Deere dealerships selling everything from combines, tractors and every sort of green implement you can imagine. The fact that I have two large Deere dealerships near me means that getting parts for my new mower shouldn’t be an issue.
Second, my grandfather. My grandfather was a small time farmer in comparison to the farming taking place around this part of Texas. But if John Deere was good enough for him, then it will be exactly what I need.
Third, American Made. I believe in buying American made products. While there are certainly lower cost options in the zero-turn mower market, I want something that when taken care of will last me for as long as I’m wanting to mow my own grass.
What John Deere Did I Buy?
Again, I researched this carefully. But I decided on the John Deere Z320R model along with a bagger kit. I purchased directly from the Deere dealership as the options available from either of the two “Big Box” store options didn’t fully suit my needs. Plus the John Deere dealership delivered my new mower, fully inspected it and spent a few minutes going over some of the operational details.
My new John Deere Z320R is kitted out with a 21.5 HP Kawasaki V-Twin engine, 42 inch mower deck with a 20 inch high-back custom-tailored seat with arm rests. While I may not plan to do any late evening mowing, the Z320R comes standard with two forward facing and two side facing bright LED lights. And the most important feature is the built-in cup holder which will come in handy in the Texas summer heat.
All-in-all I’m very satisfied with my brand new John Deere. As the mowing season is all but over for 2024, I will need to bag up leaves a few times and the new bagger kit makes super light work of this back breaking task. And yes, I’m actually looking forward to late spring when it will be time once again to mow my lawn. It’s true….nothing runs like a Deere!
Until next time…
Happy Mowing!!!
Jerry
November 15, 2024 / admin / 0 Comments
That’s Right! Ladies and Gentlemen and Children of all ages…..the time has finally come. We are 100% packed and ready to roll. The gaming machine and all my peripherals including everything in the house with exception to the kitchen sink has been meticulously packed and loaded onto a large semi which is already headed to Texas. OMG! It’s been a heck of a few weeks reaching this point. All the hard work, including recovering from COVID has finally reached the point to where we say our farewells to our neighbors and to the house that has kept my wife and I safe and secure for more than 20 years.
Back on 24 October, I celebrated my 26th year of living and calling Colorado my home. I moved here in 1998 to begin a brand new career. During the last 26 years I’ve experienced highs and lows, but have truly enjoyed my time in the Mile High City. I met my wife in 2001 and she relocated to Colorado from London in 2002. We purchased our home in the spring of 2004. Of course, it’s a bittersweet moment to sell our house and move. After all, we were married in our courtyard back in 2007. This home and our neighborhood (along with many dear friends) will be forever cemented into our memories. But my wife and I are very much looking forward to beginning the next chapter of our life in the Lone Star State.
Living in a house for the past 20 years, well we’ve accumulated a lot of stuff. I think in an earlier update I mentioned that our Colorado house was almost 4,000 sq. ft. and our new Texas house is about 2,100 sq. ft. So how does one fit a square peg into a round hole? With a big hammer right? Well in our case it’s been more like a bunch of trash bags and also a lot of trips to the second hand shops where we’ve donated a whole lot of stuff. We’re really tried to sort through and made decisions as to what to move and what to part with. Some things we’ve packed will get a second review once we begin unpacking in Texas. But we’ve done a great job in our downsizing efforts on the Colorado end.
As for the Colorado home, we met with our Colorado Realtor a few weeks ago and discussed all our options for selling our Denver home. As I’ve mentioned in previous update posts, our goal for selling our Denver home is to get the very best price, in the shortest amount of time possible and with very little stress to my wife and I. I’m sure this is what everyone wants at the end of the day, but we have some flexibility in the fact that 1, we have a new house to move into and B, we could be out of our house within two weeks if necessary.
So what is the current status of our Denver home? Drum roll please….Well we’re officially under contract pending all the necessary things that must come together between now and closing and we hope to close. Our realtor found an investor who is very interested in our Denver house and plans to make the necessary renovations and most likely put it on the market in the new year. If all goes as planned, we will close on 25 November and will do that electronically as we do not need to return to Denver to make this happen.
We’re taking our time driving home to Texas. There’s no huge rush as our contents won’t arrive until sometime next week. Our first leg was a short one. The movers didn’t get the semi packed until almost 5 PM, so we drove down to Pueblo for the first night. As we’re both tired from essentially doing nothing all day. Today (Saturday) we will drive to Sweetwater, Texas. Then on Sunday we will drive the remaining 230 miles or approx. 4 hours to Georgetown, our new home.
Of course, we will be residing in a hotel for a few days as we await the delivery of our furniture and household contents. But while we wait, I have a busy first week with the Fiber Internet install on Monday and hopefully getting some of the “Must Do” items off the check-list such as vehicle registration, drivers license etc. I figured I would do these tasks while we wait for the truck to arrive.
Finally, as Thanksgiving is quickly approaching I plan to have one somewhat fun blog posting for the 26th which discusses a fun new toy in my garage in Texas. But I would suspect that the frequency of blog postings might slow down for a few weeks. Yes, I’m missing out on the release of both MSFS 2024 and also Farming Simulator 25. But there’s just no avoiding it as my priorities must be to get the new house setup.
Thank you for allowing me to share my Texas Move Adventures with you all. There will be more updates as we get settled and of course my thoughts on MSFS 2024 and Farming Simulator 25 in due time.
Until next time…
Happy Unpacking!
Jerry
November 5, 2024 / admin / 0 Comments
Well here we are in early November and the past couple of months have flown by. One might think that having an exciting life changing moment would cause time to drag by (sort of like being a kid and counting down the days before Christmas), but time seems to have accelerated on by despite our excitement in beginning this new chapter in our lives.
Looking back to late August when my wife and I completed our journey to Texas, found our new home, then returning back to Colorado to spend almost a month recovering from COVID. This time especially went by quickly. I think because in the back of my mind I was constantly thinking about all the work that needed to be done to ready our Colorado home for market, but just too darn tired and sick to really do anything about it. But since the last update in mid October, we’ve made great progress on both our healing as well as the chores needed to get the house listed.
I’m very happy to report that we managed to meet with our realtor two weeks ago and we’ve officially listed the Denver house. Unfortunately, two months ago when we visited Texas there was only one house on the market in our neighborhood. Today there are nine. But competition can be a good thing and hopefully it will sell fast. But we just don’t know. In addition, I’ve safely packed up the gaming PC and all peripherals. I hated to do this as at the time it was still mid October, but the realtor suggested that we stage my office area to look more like an office versus a game room. So everything has been safely packed and I’ll see it again once we get settled in Texas.
So what does all this mean with regards of our physical move date? Well…first, in all honesty I’m somewhat glad for the delay as it meant I was able to perform my civic duty and cast my vote in the 2024 US Presidential Election. Had we moved any earlier, I don’t believe I would have had time to get re-registered in Texas. So that’s done!
From way back in late August/early September, it’s been our plan/goal to be moved before the US Thanksgiving holiday. With Thanksgiving falling late in November, this does give us a bit of extra time. At this time I’m not sure if we would consider moving before the Denver house sells. But either way, we still have a house we own that we’re not living in. But we’re fully insured on both fronts and we’ll reach a decision with regards to what happens next in time.
Hopefully the next time I provide an update regarding our move, it will be to announce that everything is packed, loaded in the moving truck and we (my wife and I) are headed down I-25 towards New Mexico and then on across to Texas. But time will tell….
I know my move updates have had nothing to do with simulation gaming. But I wanted to share this journey with someone and well….you who are reading this is that someone. So thank you for reading and thank you for living vicariously through these updates. I hope you’ve enjoyed the journey so far. Certainly more to come…
Until next time….
Happy Packing!!!
Jerry
October 15, 2024 / admin / 0 Comments
My wife and I have recovered from Covid which we picked up somewhere during our trip to Texas in late August. I know everyone has different symptoms with this virus, with some experiencing no symptoms to cold-like all the way to more flu-like symptoms. What we experienced was closer to flu-like symptoms. We both ran a low-grade fever for about 48 hours and experienced a complete drain of our energy levels. Our initial plan upon returning from Texas was to take a few days to recuperate from the long drive and then dive into the few projects we needed to complete in order to ready our home in Denver to go on the market. Contracting Covid was not on our Bingo card and needless to say, we’re about two weeks behind.
However, in mid September I began the more physical efforts needed to ready the house. This included a small sheetrock repair in the basement along with repainting two small rooms. We’ve also begun staging the spare bedrooms and other areas of the house to have it ready for the Realtor when they want to take pictures.
We close on the Texas property in about 3 days and thankfully we can do it electronically and I believe we’re only days away from being ready for our Realtor to do their thing. The housing market in Denver and specifically in our neighborhood is extremely hot at the moment. Houses have typically sold within two weeks after being listed. So we’re hoping for the same experience.
Also this week or early next week we plan to meet with our Denver Realtor and start the process of getting our home listed for sale. This entire process has been a long, long time in the making. But we felt we needed to truly go above and beyond in all the prep work and cleaning to bring the house up to a point where we can get maximum value for it.
Unfortunately at this point in time I’m not exactly sure when we will officially move. If our Denver house sells quickly, then obviously we will need to move prior to closing. However, in just a few days we will officially own two houses. Which of these two houses we leave empty is the big question which we’ve not answered at this time. Traditionally the housing market seems to slow down around the holidays and our illness has unfortunately thrown us behind. But I’m sure it will all work out and I’ll be certain to keep you updated on the progress. However, we’re still shooting to be moved into the Texas house before Thanksgiving.
Until next time…
More Happy Packing!
Jerry
September 10, 2024 / admin / 0 Comments
My wife and I just recently returned from our trip to Texas to visit family and to hunt for a house. During our week long stay, we toured nine different houses with our realtor and found our new dream home. Interestingly, the house we purchased was the first house we toured. We’re currently in the process of having inspections done and pending no major issues, we will close on the property in mid October.
We’re already back in Denver and will be working on getting our house here ready to go on the market. We hope to list it towards the end of this month (Sept) and believe it will sell quickly as others of the similar size in our neighborhood have sold within the first 10 days or so. While we’ve already managed to pack a considerable amount of our stuff, we still have a lot more packing to do and of course we need to arrange for the moving company.
Our target time to arrive in Texas and move into the new house is anytime after mid October to mid November. Everything from here on out really depends on the sell of our home in Denver. But we’re hoping to be in Texas and in the new house before Thanksgiving.
Until next time…
Happy Flying!!!
Jerry
August 27, 2024 / admin / 0 Comments
As mentioned back in May, my wife and I are planning to move from Colorado back to my home state of Texas. In about a week, we will visit my family in Central Texas and spend a few days shopping for a new house. It’s been a hectic past few weeks as we’ve already started sorting through 20+ years of stuff in an effort to downsize from a home of almost 5,000 sq. ft. into something about half the size. We’re making great progress, but still have so much to do.
The timeframe for our move is still very much up in the air at the moment. We know we’re going to move and we know where we’re moving to. However, at the present moment in time we don’t have a house in Texas to move into. We certainly want to move this year and would love to be settled into our new home before Thanksgiving. While the calendar tells me that Thanksgiving is still over 3 months away, we still have so much to do and to accomplish before hand.
The planned trip next weeks will hopefully produce fruit in the sense that we’ll find the home of our dreams and then be able to establish a solid plan to get everything from Colorado to Texas. But wow…is this stressful.
There may come a time where my almost weekly blog posts will fall off to perhaps only once or twice a month or perhaps to even nothing for a few months. I’ll keep you all posted on what we learn from our Texas trip. Hopefully that will be good news and we’ve found a house and can truly get this move on the way.
Until next time….
Happy Packing!!!
Jerry
May 16, 2024 / admin / 1 Comment
As many of my longtime readers may know, I am originally from the Great State of Texas. There’s actually a funny saying that I’m reminded of that goes something like this, “If a man’s from Texas, he’ll tell you. If he’s not, why embarrass him by asking?” Anyway, yes….born and raised in Texas as they say. I moved to Colorful Colorado back in 1998 for a brand new job and adventure. A lot has happened in these past 25+ years. In 2001, I met the love of my life. Together we bought our house where we’ve been living for 20 years. In 2007 we got married and of course in 2020 I officially retired.
My wife and I have been contemplating where we would live as we grow in our years and we’ve decided for us, the best place to do this is back home (at least back home for me) in the Great State of Texas. While we’ve absolutely loved living and playing in Colorado, as one grows old the cold winters are just not a thing we enjoy anymore. While Texas does have brutal summers, we feel that is the better alternative to the Colorado winters.
Our relocation back to Texas may not happen for several months. Actually, it may not even happen this calendar year. We’re going to visit family this August and tour a few potential neighborhoods in the North Georgetown area. Beyond starting to do some organizing and cleaning up of unneeded junk that we don’t plan to move to Texas, the real planning for the move will occur sometime after this trip takes place. Naturally this will include placing our current home on the market.
The housing market (especially in our current neighborhood) is very strong at the moment. But in addition to selling our current home, we have to find a new home in Texas, which we may or may not find during our visit in August. The longer we wait (after the August timeframe) the closer we get to the end of the year and the holidays. Things tend to slow down and almost stall towards the end of the year as most people don’t tend to move or change locations at this time.
Having said all that, I’m excited about this move back to my home state. We will be downsizing as well. Our current house is almost 5,000 sq. ft of living space including finished basement and upstairs. We’re looking for something in the 3,000 – 3,500 sq. ft. range all single level as my old knees won’t tolerate stairs in the coming years.
While this blog post has nothing to do with simulation gaming, I have always strived to keep my loyal readers involved as much as possible or as much as I want you to be involved in my personal life. This is a big step for my wife and I, and will certainly mark a brand new chapter in our lives together. I’ll occasionally update you on our progress as we make this journey together.
Until next time….
Jerry
June 10, 2023 / admin / 1 Comment
In my last blog post where I discussed the upcoming MSFS AAU2 (Aircraft & Avionics Update) which is due to release on 23 June, I briefly mentioned some issues I had been having with my gaming PC. The PC in question, I called GBS Beast Mark V (which was the 5th gaming machine I had built in recent years). I built the machine in May of 2018 (5 years ago) and at the time it was pretty much top of the line with an Intel i7 8700K CPU, Nvidia 1080Ti GPU and 32GB of RAM. It performed well with the games of that time period including American Truck Simulator, Euro Truck Simulator 2 and Prepar3D Flight Simulator. It performed OK with the new Microsoft Flight Simulator. However, sacrifices had to be made with some graphic settings in an effort to keep the FPS above the 30 FPS mark.
However, over the past month or so I had been experiencing several issues which caused concern for the overall health and longevity of the machine. I’m pretty good about keeping backups, so about two weeks ago I made a backup of everything I needed and a few days later the machine finally rolled over and said no more. I quickly put a plan in place to start looking at the costs of building a new machine which would obviously be more powerful and hopefully future proof for at least another 5 years.
GBS Beast Mark VI
Obviously technology has taken a huge leap forward over the past several years and certainly so since 2018. As previously stated, I wanted to try to future proof any new build everywhere possible. As with previous builds, the most intensive gaming I play is flight sim. To truly maximize the total immersion possible, any new build would need to have the very best CPU and GPU available and that’s what I’ve done with this new build.
GBS Beast Mark VI features an Intel i9 13900KF CPU on a Z790 motherboard and cooled with a liquid CPU cooler. In addition, I’m going with the top of the line Nvidia 4090 24GB GPU. In addition, I’m adding three Samsung 990 Pro NVME SSD’s and reusing three Samsung 870 Evo SSD’s from the old machine. Total storage capacity will be 8 TB. In addition, I’m adding 32 GB RAM (DDR5) which is more than enough for the games I play and all this will be housed in a massive (largest case I’ve ever used due to the massive Nvidia 4090 GPU) Corsair 5000D Airflow ATX Case.
Testing Benchmarks
As I have stated many, many times over the years. I tweak my system for smoothness and typically don’t concern myself too much with how many FPS I can get from the hardware. As stated above, my old gaming machine was still capable of giving me a fairly smooth experience around the 30 FPS mark in Microsoft Flight Simulator. Of course, I had to dialed down some of the graphics settings in order to achieve this, but nonetheless I was able to enjoy the sim just the same.
Of course, the beauty of having this extremely beefy system now with the i9 13900 KF CPU and the truly awesome Nvidia 4090 GPU, I’m pretty much able to run my graphics settings to the full extreme and still enjoy a smooth, buttery visual experience at 60+ FPS with both the Fenix Airbus A320 and the PMDG Boeing 737-800.
The WOW Factor
I’m literally blown away at the huge leap forward I’m experiencing with this new PC and it very much reminds me of how I felt 5 years ago when GBS Beast Mark V came to life. But of course MSFS wasn’t around at that time and has completely changed the flight simulation landscape. Over the next few weeks I’ll continue tweaking the new machine and will post my settings once they are all dialed in the way I want them. While I’m not saying one cannot enjoy MSFS without a 4090 GPU, I will just say that it is absolute joy to see the virtual skies in all their glory without sacrificing performance.
It’s great to have a gaming machine once again and I look forward to many years of what I believe will be truly awesome experiences in all the simulation games I enjoy. Obviously, Farming Simulator and American Truck/Euro Truck will certainly enjoy the benefits of the updated hardware, but of course not to the same level as MSFS since that is both a CPU and GPU extensive simulation.
Until next time…
Happy Gaming!
Jerry
