Shopping while hungry is a dangerous thing.

We went shopping today. It's payday, so we figured we would spend all our money all in one fell swoop.

Anyhow, the only thing on our list was diapers and wipes, Tara tells me that alone was $70. The total was $300, and we don't have anything here to eat! (Just kidding)

Emma lost her brand new Donald Duck comic book. I had just picked it up for her on the way to the store. I guess it was really me that lost it, she had it in the basket, I moved it to but jugs of milk in, and when we got to the checkout, it was gone. It's not in the store, I went all over it after, I'm pretty sure someone picked it up and walked off with it. I just called the store, and they didn't get it turned in.

Emma got her birthday present from Grandma

Emma really likes the present. I think the maggots and flies are a nice touch, but it's been banished from the house, and is currently at my office...

Game Time

Trivial Pursuit

Me - 1
Tara - 0

It was a close game, I still had 2 pie pieces left when Tara filled hers, but like a prize fighter, I pulled myself off the mat and gave it a final go...


Outburst

Me - 1
Tara - 0

I think Tara choose this because she thought it was a game she would crush me at. I distracted her with a grasshopper shake. In the end, it was 59 to 59, and on my final turn, I scored 11 points to win the game.

I am the big weiner. At least Tara knows even on her birthday, I don't just let her win...

Netflix profiles

I have discovered something new - Netflix profiles. Basically, Tara, the Girls, and I each have a separate profile. Each profile is assigned 1 disk at a time. This way, the girls can make their selection, and when they decide to sent that one back, they get another of their selections. Previously, we tried to bring disks to the top as we got around to it, but more often than not, we got the sets that Tara and I wanted to watch. Sometimes we would have 2 or 3 of a TV series together at the same time.

Not anymore. The girls have theirs. Taras profile has nothing but Star Trek Voyager (She's currently in the middle of season 2.) I have gotten rid of all ratings for my profile, except for things I wanted. No longer will Netflix try to get me to get The Wiggles, or some girly movie. (I leave that to Tara...)

Anyway, I hope to broaden Tara's horizons a little with my profile. First up is The Tick (animated series), which releases on DVD tomorrow. Right after that is Barney Miller - Season 1. It will be much easier to get things like Buck Rodgers, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Huckleberry Hound, and MST3K to trickle to the top...

Ruth, hoping no one notices that she's grabbing the planter ornaments...

Emma, in the middle of some 1920's danceoff.

Mary striking a pose

Production worthy

Here is Kate, field testing the chair

The chair is finished

I finally finished the chair. It's shiny because I just barely finished paining the thing. Tomorrow after church, I will drag it out of the shed, and set it on the front porch.

Having finished the thing (version 1.0), I will make some changes for the next(version 2.0). I would:

1. Not use the same pattern as this one. I had to make some modifications on the fly just to get this one put together. I would make some minor changes to the next one so that it's build even better.
2. I would paint the pieces before putting anything together. Having made one, I won't worry that the pieces are wrong or anything. This will make the painting MUCH easier. I can cut it, sand it properly, and get it painted without trouble. Then I would put it together, putty the holes, and put a little more paint one the thing.
   
3. I would not leave so much time between working on it. It should have been done much sooner this summer.

Anyway, it's done. What do you think?

Ruth's Super Power

Here you see Ruth using her heat vision. She has her hand up on her head to try to shield others from seeing her use it, but I was at the right place at the right time...

Here you can see that secretly, Batman and Superman are a midget tag team wrestling duo. Who would have known.

In this picture, you can see how happy Ruth is to see that Emma got some new crayons. Some of the vacant stares in the background are because I put the camera on auto retake, it kept flashing every 5 or 6 seconds.

Emma's Birthday

Emma's birthday was today. We had cake and ice cream for her. As you can see, she had concerns that everyone would show up. (They did.)

Emma got new Superman pajamas. This allows Ruth to now wear Emma's old Batman outfit. (Emma still wore it, even though it was a little too small...

The cake had the essentials, Scooby Doo and sprinkles.

As you can see, Emma had a good time opening the presents.

We're not telemarketers, we are conducting a survey

Anyone else notice the explosion of people who call to do surveys? (Do Not Call list really messed that industry, I assume...)

Last week Tara took one from someone who was pushing an online College. The person on the other end started out by saying they were doing a survey and wanted to know if she was interested in Education. (I think it's a little stretch to say that one question followed by a sales pitch can be concidered a survey...) Anyway, they wasted 10 minutes of her time before she could get them to realize that if she wanted to go back to school, she could do it here for free. (It sounded like they were kind of aggressive...)

They called for me late yesterday afternoon. I recognized it from what Tara told me right away. I had also been up all night the night before patching servers, and hadn't gotten all that much sleep in by late afternoon, so I was in no mood to play. After her opening volley about my being interested in education, I told her that I was not interested in education, and how did she get my number. She told me she was just doing a survey. I asked again, "Who sold you my name and number, how did you get it?" Then the lady actually said, (I am not making this up) "Sir, you are not listening to me. I want to know if you are interested in education, I want to give you a survey." This didn't provoke the response she was looking for, I gaurentee it. From then, I instructed her to make sure they never called me back again, etc, etc. There was a slight(not awkward on my end) pause, followed by "Thank you sir, goodbye." I just hope someone else was listening in on that one.

Occasionally I am in the mood to participate in surveys. Once in a while at least. I am never in the mood to buy something over the phone, and I really don't like the people who try to telemarket in the guise of doing a survey. If they call back, I will take the gloves off.

What's in a name?

Now don't get me wrong, there's absolutely nothing wrong with my name, and I don't plan to change it, but in the words of Daffy Duck, "This is getting ridiculous!" (Pardon my spit.)

My full name is on the terror watch list. Now, others and I don't really fault them on this, I get grumpy standing in those lines and having my personal space violated on the planes, but it is annoying to be on that list...

There is a guy in town that owns a bunch of apartments. He is often found at the city council meetings foaming at the mouth about one thing or another. If I decide to write an email to the mayor or councilwoman here, I introduce myself as "Not that other guy."

There is a kid who still lives or used to live around here who is involved in some pretty signifigant credit fraud. I started getting calls from collectors about the time I took the unlisting setting off with the phone company. Most of the calls go something like this: "This is so and so from such and such credit agency." I say: "Can I give you the last 4 digits of my Social Security number?" They say: "Sure, go ahead" I say: "****" They say: "OK, thank you for you time.", and they hang up. Today we got a letter from a collection agency in Williamsville, NY. At first sight, I thought it was a doctor's bill or something, and asked Tara if we had been to the doctor while we were in Buffalo. I called them, and the conversation lasted only as far as the last 4 digits of my social security number. Most of the time it's amounts below $500, I don't know he he figures that's his limit per card, or what. (Is it a Small Claims Court thing?) Anyway, maybe I should be proactive and try to find the guy, just so people stop bugging me. Or maybe I should go back to an unlisted number.

The guy in the desk nex to mine and me share the same first name and first initial of the last name. People come in and ask for us, we both answer. (We think it's funny.) If he calls me, I ask him if he wants me or he wants himself.

Pants Optional Wednesdays

Pancakes were good. Someone brought in sliced fresh peaches. On top of that, I put blueberry syrup.

No argument ended up starting in the office. Party A was there, but Party B had failed to show
by the time I lost interest and left.

One of the Campus Auditors called to ask if I had been talking to the Church Auditors. I told him they came 3 or 4 weeks ago, and asked for a few things, but I still didn't know what they thought they were getting at or anything like that. Since the meeting is set up for tomorrow, he was interested in coming to talk also. (I think the Campus auditors are a little ticked off that these guys have gone behind their back and are bugging people.) Anyway, he's coming tomorrow, I very much doubt the discussion will get us very far, if the little Russian dude would just come out and say what he's trying to find out, we could be done with the whoel process in about 15 minutes... Marty told me to be nice to him.

I took the car for an oil change (free from the dealership for the first 3 years...) It included a car wash, which I didn't expect.

I'm off to sleep a little so that I make some sort of sense at Presidency meeting tonight.

I hate the "Out of Office Reply" setting...

So it's 3:30am. I have just about wrapped up the latest round of patching (30 hours ahead of a visit from the auditors, by the way), and have realized that I created a large number of emails to myself about machines I rebooted. (and didn't get all the paged I should have - a problem for when I'm not so tired...)

Anyway, the backup server dutifully emailed to the backup list that it was back online. I actually wonder how I can stop this function, it bothers me in and of itself, but immediately after that, Out of Office replys come back to the list. I am not a fan.

My biggest problem with the Out of Office Reply is that it makes me think that you think that I need to know you are not there. I don't. In fact, many, many, many times, I recieve email and ignore it for days. Especially from particular people. If figure, if they go away, I send an email, and don't hear back for a week, so much the better in most cases. It means I can get other stuff done.

Maybe I should just write a rule in my mail client, and quiese the messages to that I never see them again. Maybe it's just the sleepiness talking.

I have a "8:30: drop Kate off at school - 8:45: pancakes with blueberry syrup - 9:00: sit and listen to an arguement at work without getting very involved - 9:30: go get an oil change" morning, so I guess I'd better say so long for now. If I come back in 12 hours and this post makes no sense, I will delete it...

Cell Phone Bill

I use my cell a lot. At least a lot more than some of my co-workers. We have a pooled plan in the office, and the way it was explained to me was that there is something like 150 phones, and when one person only has 45 minutes worth of calls for the month, it makes so they don't really care so much about us high use people. On top of that, it's verizon for the group, and verizon to verizon doesn't count against the pooled minutes.

Having said that, I still get a statement every month listing every call I make. I'm not sure what percentage of the calls are actually dinging the plan, but the plan is not going over, so no one worries about it.

In July, I had 1444 minutes on my cell. This is up about 200 minutes from the previous month. That's over 45 minutes per day. Every month I look at this statement and can't believe it. Then I have days like yesterday at work, and it all makes sense.

The good news is that I wanted to use more of the unlimited nights and weekends minutes, and I brought that up by about 200 minutes from last time. (I just failed to bring down the peak minutes any.)

I also get 250 pages per month, I really only use this for having my monitor page me when critical machines go down, so it's not a bad thing use is very low. Tonight I am patching and rebooting everything, so I will hit 15 pages tonight, eclipsing last months total overall.

Anyway, give me a call, just don't be suprised if it goes directly to voicemail...

Campus Education Week (And that's the polite term for it)

Education Week started on campus. That means instead of lots of kids walking around, you have lots of adults walking around (am I implying that college students are not adults?), and none of them know exactly where they are going. It used to be that the HP World conference was the week of Education week, but that conference is dead, buried and forgotten now, so I'm here on campus. Well, not exactly. Our office is just off campus, away from the fray, so we are a little isolated from it. Just don't eat on campus or anywhere near it.

I said there were lots of people walking around lost. There are also lots of people in cars going around lost. Walking from Kate's school to my office (through campus, about a mile total), I cross 4 streets (at lights of course). This morning I was nearly hit twice. One was someone who really needed to turn left, and just couldn't wait until I got fully across the street. The other was an old guy who just either didn't see the light or notice it was red. Interesting times.

I only got stopped twice for directions, so that's a step up from normal. There are students all over town with nothing to do for 2 weeks, until the semester starts again, why can't they pay them $100 for the week to sit at every bench on campus with an information sign? Walk right up to the info guy with confidence that he can get you where you need to go, then you don't have to ask 5 different people in the course of a half mile. People could always get where they are going in that event... (Maybe there are reasons. They didn't ask me for my input, really.)

Anyway, it's not all bad. Tara usually goes with her Mom, they enjoy it, but for some reason, the last couple of years it has been on the same week that school starts here. They weren't able to go to anything this week but the play.

I'll just stay holed up in my office until it's over.

...and soon to be one more plant.

Tonight at 10pm, I found myself out back digging a hole. I haven't even read a Stephen King story in years, what's going on here?

Anyway, I have chosen a spot for the apricot tree. The nebulous 'they' say that the biggest problem with an apricot is that if you have a warm spell during the winter, the buds open up, and then when it freezes again, you have trouble because your crop for the year is ruined. If you live in a place like this (and we do...) it's better to plant on the North side of a building, so that in the warm spells, the plant is shaded and possibly you can keep it dormant until the real Spring arrives. Late frosts (which we usually also have) also ruin that year's crop of apricots. 'They' say that when it's warm for good, the sun is higher in the sky, and the tree gets what it needs, so the North side of the house it is.

I dug a hole tonight, and filled it with water. The water (in my years of tree planting experience) is to make sure that you have proper drainage. If the water is not gone by morning, you do not have proper drainage. Well, 15 minutes later, and the water is 1/3 gone. It should be fine. Besides, the water in the hole actually makes it easier to takes pictures of it at night.

The tree will be smack dab out the back window for all to see. Planting happens tomorrow. (I figured that the North side shade also lets me plant now, even before it cools off a little, which will hopefully let the tree get set before Winter rolls in.)

One less plant in the world

I believe this is the bush that causes me such problems with allergies every spring. Not confirmed, just strongly suspected. As you can see, it's not the full and crazy picture of itself that it always was. I have been slowly pruning it up in pieces, and stuffing it in the yard waste can. Another couple of weeks, and the plant will be gone. It's like a Stephen King book for the plant world.

Working at the Cannery

Our Stake had a cannery assignment today. They had tons of peaches to can. We actually got a call earlier in the week that the weekend before didn't go so hot, and they really needed us to show up.

I got there at 2pm, they put me on the can dispenser machine. This was kind of nice, I didn't get too dirty doing it. It was also a job that involved a fair amount of piddling around. Lucky I had the labelers and loaders to keep me entertained.

A guy from my Elder's Quorum was assigned to help load the cases of peaches onto palettes. Right off the bat, this Guy started having trouble. I don't know if he didn't understand what exactly he was supposed to do, or if he was trying too hard not to screw it up, or what, but pretty soon, all labeling and boxing had stopped because the loading onto pallettes was so backed up. The guy doing the boxing started getting pretty upset, and the cans of peaches on the conveyor waiting for labeled really piled up.

I got sidetracked loading a new pallate of empty cans into the dispenser, the next thing I know, this Guy was no longer loading pallates, he was replaced by 2 ladies. He was given the job of folding open boxes. He alternated between getting too many out there, and making the piles too high, and not getting enough done. Again, the guy doing the boxing started getting upset.

I must not have messed up too bad with the can machine, I only got fired because the shift was over. The next shift was to be staffed by another ward, but as of Thursday night, they still had no one signed up. I waited out for people from our ward to try to get them to stay, but got no takers. I ended up staying for another 2 hour shift.

Having been replaced on the can machine, I was put on the front end peach sorter. This connects to the machine that cuts the peaches in half. This was much more involved and mind numbing than the can machine.

After 2 hours, all those peaches made me ravenously hungry for a few peaches. The cannery did not sell any little sacks of peaches... The whole time the 2 shift, I kept trying to remember the Peach song from Peach Week. I can remember some of the words, but not the tune. I still don't have it together. For those not in the know, Peach Week was a Moon Apartments tradition, where someone brought all kind of peaches in from his parents peach trees, we had a festival all that week, including a peach queen and her attendants....

If haircare were up to me...

...they would be lucky to even get this far.

Interesting blog stats

Ok, so they might only be interesting to me... All stats are since 28 July, when I added Google Analytics.

The most popular screen resolution for people looking at this page is 1024x768. I assume this is the resolution on the computer at my parents house, among others. The lowest 2 resolutions were 240x320 and 800x600. These people are either half blind or their browser was lying to analytics. The largest resolution was 3600x1200, which I assume is my laptop and 2nd screen at work. (Yes, that is a lot of space, and yes, I like it very much.)

Colors: 32-bit - 179; 24-bit - 62; 16-bit - 14. 6 or 7 colors is all I really need...

Platform: Windows - 241 (Of which only 5 are not Windows XP. 2 were actually Win 98...); Linux - 7; Mac - 4. Who are those Mac people out there?

Browser - 65% Internet Explorer; 33.33% Firefox; 1.18% Safari; 0.35% Opera. Good work on the firefox out there. Lets keep it up people. Three people had IE version 4.0.1 - you SERIOUSLY need to consider upgrading...

Most people spend 0-10 seconds on the site. (Fast readers) 1/6 of visitors spend 1 to 5 minutes on the site. Someone actually spent 30 minutes on the site, I assume they forgot and walked away from their computer. Maybe the large number of people who spend 0-10 seconds means either I don't have interesting enough content, or I don't use enough big words.

68% of visitors are 'new', 32% are 'returning'. This is since July 28th, that day everyone was new... 68% was the normalized number after about 7 days.

17 people have visited 26-50 times. Thanks for visiting. 80 people have visited and never come back. I'm sure there have been one or two of them who were offended and went for a walk.

Average pageviews per visit is 1.62.

Still no visits from an unknown location in the Middle East, and nothing yet from China.

Funtime Hookey Fridays

I wasn't going into work today. This didn't last long, people actually noticed I was not there, and must have resented it, because they kept calling until they browbeat me into coming into work.

It wasn't all bad. Sorrel made curry and rice for lunch, which was pretty good. I actually got some things done I needed to do. I was told that this Wednesday for pancakes (One of the DBA's makes pancakes every Wednesday), there will be blueberry syrup.

I got a call from someone that wanted to change the date next week that I will be patching the servers. He asked if I could do it on Wednesday morning (the day and time I had it scheduled). I was more than happy to work around that schedule.

So, Funtime Hookey Friday appears to involve lots more work than Funtime Hookey Monday.

Ruth

Ruth has a few things she is trying to to do.

1. She is trying her hardest to carry on a conversation with someone. If this keeps up, she will be the most talkative of the girls. None of what she says makes sense yet, but that doesn't stop her. My guess is that she just has an opinion on everything. (Not sure where that comes from.)
2. She is trying to learn to jump. So far, she has failed to get airborne. She is learning this from either Emma, who likes to jump like a frog, or from Mario, who likes to jump all over the place.
3. She is trying to read. She can sit for an hour looking at books. You think she's being too quiet, which for certain of her sisters is a bad thing, but when you go to look for her, she's just sitting somewhere reading a book.
4. She is trying to learn to wink, which is always funny in a baby.
   

Anyway, she's got a lot going on right now, not sure how that will go once Kate and Mary start school here coming up. We'll have to see.

Game time

Age of Empires III

Me, Rob, and Rob's brother - 1
3 dudes - 0
We just kind of ripped through them...

Same trio - 1
3 computers (hard) - 0
Amazon map - should have made it expert.

My very first 911 call

I went to the bank this afternoon, and I came out the front of it to go back to my car. Turning the corner, less than 100 yards away, is a hill with a house on top. At the base of the hill was a guy with a bucket, right in front of a little 5 foot wide fire.

My very first instinct was to run and help get the fire out. I actually took a couple of steps, and bumped my elbow pretty hard on our car's mirror. Then better instinct kicked in (or something), and I thought "That hill is pretty dry, maybe I should call 911."
The fire had started at the base of the hill, just below the firefighter on the left. By the time I got through the county Emergency response and was talking to the city dispatcher, the entire first tier of the thing was in flames. (Maybe a minute total) They asked if it was an emergency, or if I could hold. I said "There's a fire." She said "A fire?" I said "A big fire." She asked where I was, told me emergency personnel were on their way, and hung up. It took a few minutes for the engines to get there, the entire hill was on fire by then, I was out at the street to point them into the place.

I think they got it out before the house caught it. The first firetruck went up the house's driveway, and from the ground, it looks ok.

Drew tells me that they don't care who started the thing, they just get it out and move along. I'm not sure if it's true, and I'm not sure exactly what started the thing, but there was an employee from Kuhni Landscaping at the base of the hill, just after the fire started, and it spread really fast.

Anyway, I don't think anyone was hurt, including the idiots running up the thing while the fire was spreading with their rakes and hoes. (Not sure what they planned to do with garden implements with the fire spreading that fast.)

Tom works about 4 blocks away, they had a really good view of the flames.

And that's the news at 3. We return you to your regularly scheduled program, which is being joined in progress.

Baseball predictions, Round 3

It's been a while, and there is only 6 weeks left in the season, so I thought I'd pull those old predictions out to see how they are doing...

They were:

NL Playoff teams: NY Mets, Chicago Cubs, LA Dodgers, Washingtons Nationals
AL Playoff teams: Toronto Blue Jays, Cleveland Indians, Oakland A's, Chicago White Sox

Well, the Mets have a 12 game lead in their division, and look to be the team to beat in the NL. The Dodgers are at the top of their division, (and got Greg Maddux) and have a strong shot. The Nationals I will continue to say I must have been hallucinating. The Cubs were 16 games back a few weeks ago, but are only 11.5 games back as of today. There is still a chance. You heard it here first.

Toronto has some work to do to get in the playoffs. They can be forgiven, they are a Canadian team. (Do we have any Canadians out there?) Cleveland, well, what can I say. I really have no idea what in the world I was thinking. They are 24.5 games back right now. Their players are just phoning it in from the golf course. Oakland is on top of their division, and the white sox are hanging in there.

What do I get for 5 or 6 out of 8? Go Cubs. (Might as well root for the underdog.)

I will be in Houston next month. I want to go to Minute Maid Park to see a game...

Bringing new meaning to the term "Tongue in Cheek"

When I was 18 or 19, I had my wisdom teeth out. While they were in there, they scarred up the inside of my cheeks on each side, the right better than the left. (I figure they had something in there keeping the jaws apart, I was competely out, so I don't know. I also got bad dry sockets after. There's this dentist in Buffalo I would not recommend...)

Anyway, with the scarring on the cheek, I from time to time will accidentally bite the scar and hurt it. This is not pleasant. This is one of the main reasons I rarely chew gum, it took a while for me to learn that little lesson...

This morning, when leaving the house, I accidentally bit my cheek. It's driving me crazy. The biggest problem is that once I do it, the scar swells up, and gets nicked over and over during the day. Simply maddening.

Intramural College Bowl

Back in the day Rob and I had an intramural college bowl team. The school's extramural team ran the show. (Earl got us going on it.) Basically it was Rob and I and whoever else we could get would go play against other teams. We would get Jonathan, Russ, Christine Brinton, or whoever we could.

Every once in a while, I would start to think that we had something going. We would get the right mix of people together and win a match or two. Then we would have a session where the other team didn't show up for the match. This is where things started to fall apart. To give us something to do, we would end up playing Earl or Ken. Earl was interesting to play. He would answer a bunch of questions right, but then fess up that he knew some of them from reading them before. Ken was different. Ken would just flat out smoke us. No ifs, ands, or buts. If there was any ego going in, it got ripped out, torn up, and stomped on before you left.

Anyway, the only reason for the reminiscing is that recently I signed up for Ken's weekly trivia quiz. The first week I got 0 out of 7. (In my reply with the answers, I told him that my guess was that I went 0 for 7, Ken's reply was simply "Now you're 1 for 8!" Hilarious.) Last week I went 2 for 7. I'm not sure about this week, I know I got at least 3 right.

Keeping the ego in check every once in a while is a good thing, right?

Blogger = Google

Blogger will 'soon' be intergrated with the normal google accounts. They now have a beta page up. (Beta like gmail?) No more publishing the blog. Changes are updated on the fly. No more removing all listings, and monitoring to make sure no one accesses it. It has a little drag and drop template changer, you can add a number of different elements to it.

Anyway, I was denied the ability to upgrade this blog to the new service. I'm not sure when they will broaden the thing, we'll just have to wait and see. For now, I am switching my work blog over, so that I can lock it down. (Only people you invite can view the blog...)

Funtime Hookey Mondays

I didn't go to work today. Well, I went, but only stayed for 3 minutes. Mondays have been bad lately. I don't know what it is, but people seem to either have had more problems on Monday, or their brains didn't engage properly after the weekend, and they decide to call me for help. Last Monday, I seriously concidered taking all remaining Mondays for the year off. They thought I was joking in my office, but I was pretty scarce today. I "worked from home', which consisted of about 3 hours total work, and the rest of the time doing laundry, loading the dishwasher, and playing Age of Empires III.

I expected my cell to ring off the hook like it usually does, but to my suprise, it did not. I got one call from the Bookstore guys, they actually had a problem. (They are low maintainence, it was actually something I needed to pass on to someone else.)

If skipping work on Monday is this nice every week, I might keep doing it.

Dell laptop battery recall

Dell has recalled a large number of laptop batteries. It turns out they have a number of batches of them made by Sony that could burst into flames. Not a good thing if it's sitting in your lap.

If you search hard enough, you can find the little tiny link to their recall page. Neither of my batteries are in the recall, although that might be the only way for me to ensure that they are both charged at the same time, just send them back to Dell.

Here's my public service announcement:

If you are reading this on a Dell laptop, stop right now, pull the battery out, and go to the site to see if you are part of the recall.

Ok, so if you are reading this still, one of several things has happened:

1. You are not using a Dell laptop
2. You had the machine on A/C power, so that it didn't shut down, you have looked, and are back
   
3. You didn't listen to me

If your answer was #3, stop right now, pull the battery out, and go to the site to see if you are part of the recall.

End of Public Service Announcement

Restaurant Review

Brick Oven

Somehow, it's just not the same as 'back in the days'...

For one thing, my cost memory is bad. It feels like it costs more now. They have gotten rid of their "After 9pm special", and you can't get just the pasta bar anymore. Mondays are supposed to have Pesto linguine, but they didn't. (Maybe they thought it was Tuesday.)

Anyway, we went for a birthday dinner for Emma. That was our excuse anyway. I used to be able to eat 5 or 6 plates of pasta, now my limit is 2 1/2. The 5 or 6 plates was back in my 6000 calorie a day construction work period. (Not sure how many calories really) Not so anymore.

There were some guys that came in towards the end of our dinner, Tara thought they were being obnoxious. They weren't all that bad, she has no idea how things used to be. Back at our prime, we were the Kings.

We bought the girls a pizza, it's lots cheaper than individual kids meals, and they were still full at the end. Mondays are "Buy a pizza, get free root beer day, so they were happy all around.

Long and the short of it, we waited too long for dinner, took the short way out and ate out.

Before and After - Me

Before and After - Ruth

Before and After - Emma

Before and After - Mary

Before and After - Kate

8 Years ago today

... And I wouldn't trade it for anything different.

Raining sideways

Tonight we had a little storm blow in, for a little bit, it was raining sideways. (Again, but not with nearly as much force as a couple of weeks ago...)

This would have been fine, except I put a coat of paint on the bottom side of my chair several hours before that. (No sign of the storm then...) It looks like the wet got just barely far enough in (10 feet, at least) to our car port to get the chair wet and splatter dirt up onto the part touching the ground. (You can also see the fine sanding job I gave the one piece. Just remember that it's my trial run, by the time I was sanding the thing, I had already been mad at the guy who wrote the plans wrong... The first chair is always the worst, I plan to get better...)

Anyhow, assuming nothing bad has happened - the paint drys fast here, and it's outdoor paint, so I assume it's ok - on Monday, I hope to turn it over, give the top the final coat of paint, and call the chair finished. Stay tuned for another picture...

Nickelcade

Tonight we went to the nickelcade. Well, they should call it the 'tri-nickelcade' now, most of the games are 15 cents to play.
I won this duck on "The Claw", with my first try. The Claw was 10 cents a try, so I'll call this guy "Dime Duck". While I was pulling it out, I heard it say something to the effect of "The Mystic Portal awaits..."

I beat Tara in air hockey, 6-2. Normally the games are a little closer, like 7-6 or 6-7, but not this time. I refuse to make myself believe that her current medical condiction has anything to do with it...

Although inflation has now hit the nickelcade, it's still a pretty good deal.

Restaurant Review

The Olive Garden

If you haven't been to the Olive Garden, Tara would recommend just the salad. Or at least an entree, but eat as much salad as you can, and take the entree home. That's her modus operandi.

I had the maranera pasta. It was ok. When we go to the Olive Garden, it's mostly for Tara...

Answer: These guys

Question: What set of wasps will not be stinging me this year? This is not a bad thing.

Apricot tree location - Vote Now!

I have taken a few pictures of the potential locations for our new tree. Look over them, then post a comment to select your favorite. (Listed in no particular order...)
#1 - Front yard, smack dab in the front of the window in the front room. When the trees grows larger, it would be sure to evoke the song "I looked out the window, and what did I see..."
#2 - Front yard, right in the middle of the drive. The right hand side of the drive would be torn out, the left kept for a walkway. The car would be parked at the street. (Not such a bad thing, really.)
#3 - Right side of the house, just in front of the car port. This would give shade to the kitchen. Tara would like it because I would never park the car there again. Quite a bit of concrete would need to be broken up and hauled off to make this happen.
#4 - Middle of back yard, towards the back. I could bring out a little semi circle (Really a semi ellipse) of stone, likely 2 layers high, as an extension of the wall that's still not completed. This would isolate the tree a little from the yard and make it look like we planned that all along.
#5 - Back yard, corner of the garden. The stones already hedge in this little spot. It's sitting on some dead weeds, this would be removed. To the right is a tomato plant that seems to be taking over all available space. The yard is in need of mowing.#6 - Back yard, near the house. This is right next to the old stump. This spot would have lots of shade (still not sure that's a good thing), and would also evoke the little song. I also worry that this is the coldest spot in the yard, and don't want the tree loosing it's blossoms every year, if I can avoid it...

Vote now, the tree is to be planted by mid-september at the latest. (Waiting for the daytime highs to drop 7-10 degrees...)

Tara's Anniversary present

Saturday is our 8 year anniversary. There has been some discussion in the past about my poor gift selection. We will not get into that here. Instead, I will show you what I got Tara. (It came in the mail today, the package was labeled with what was inside.)

It's a giclee print of 'Christ with Mary and Martha'. (17.5" x 23.5") Designed not to fade for 50 years.

Tara seems to like it. The girls seemed mostly worried about the picture that I took do to put this one up...

Email and reply

Email:

Professors,

I have attached the book order list that I received from the bookstore for fall 2006. If you could please confirm that all of the books are correct and actually listed for each of your classes for fall semester that would be greatly appreciated. Please let me know if there are any problems so we can get them sorted out as soon as possible before the beginning of classes! Thanks for all of your help with this.

Britni
Political Science Secretary

My Reply:

Either you have the wrong email address for someone, or someone forgot to send me a memo...

__________________________________________________________

I hope someone isn't playing a bad joke on me. I would really hate corrupting or confusing a bunch of polysci students...

Emma and Ruth's favorite song

Emma and Ruth's favorite song is "Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree."

Now we have an apricot tree. President Monsivais gave it to me. It has had a little bit of a rough life so far, but things are now looking up for it. I just have to figure out where to put it... I figure there are a number of options:

• The first rung (and lowest level) of the garden. This would give a little shade to the garden, and maybe help things like peas, lettuce, and broccoli grow
• The front yard by the drive
• The driveway itself. I'm not adverse to tearing out the concrete
• The corner of the back yard where the Box Elder used to be. This wouldn't give a lot of shade, and I'm not sure how well it would grow.
• Somewhere else
  

It's a Goldbar Apricot, in case you were wondering, not that it means anything past 'apricot' to me. Our neighbors across the street cut their apricot tree down last year, it was a sad day. The trees are 3-4 in bearing, typically, so don't come around until then.

Plane tickets

A number of plane tickets were purchased today. For work next month, I am going to a conference. I got them to fly me into Phoenix after, not home.

I bought Tara a ticket to Phoenix and back, she lands there 6 minutes after I do. I bought a plane ticket for the trip back home in the seat next to hers.

Looks like we are committed to one more vacation this year...

Midnight snacks

I have been staying up late since I got back from the trip last week. This is only partly due to work related issues...

With late night revelry, comes late night snacks. Today's entry is cilantro chili. No spoons are used, just chips.

2006 HP Tech Forum

For a while, I didn't plan to attend the HP Tech Forum this year. I didn't get a presentation done during their call for papers. (I think 2 weeks was much too short a time...)

3 weeks ago, I took a look at the public session scheduler. I wasn't all that impressed. For one thing, a number of the interesting sessions were duplicates of the stuff I heard last week in Ft. Collins. (Or at least the base of what we heard. Last week was NDA, HP Tech has less NDA stuff, so we saw more last week...) Most of the rest of it was pretty basic stuff.

Last week I talked to one of the guys who was on the HPUX selection team for the forum. I talked to him about how the large layer of basic stuff was good to have for the conference, but on top of that they needed to have a little bit larger selection of non-basic stuff than they currently provided. (Feedback for next year.) He told me to look at the scheduler again, there were new things added.

Well, there a few more things added (maybe not lots, but more). The Tech forum I figured would be worth it (as of last week) if I could take a certification exam there. (They are free at the Tech Forum.)

The HPUX Certified Systems Engineer certification has 2 exams, one for Advanced System Administration, and one for a specialty, 'High Availablity' or 'Networking and Security'. Last year at the Tech forum, I took (and passed) the Advanced Sysadmin exam. Well, I wasn't really interested in HA, and the Networking and Security exam had yet to be released.

A few weeks ago, I had emailed the cert office, asking about the N&S exam. Their answer was that it was scheduled to be released at the end of July. I looked August 1, and it was not there. This morning, I wrote an email to the head of HP certified, detailing my waiting for the exam, and how it was the linchpin in my decision to attend the conference. After sending off the email, I went back to the site, and found the exam was indeed available to take! I felt like an idiot sending the email. Luckily, I was a bigger idiot, and typed the guy's email wrong, the thing bounced back.

Now I plan to attend the Tech Forum, and have started the paperwork. I expect to take and pass the exam then, to finish the HPUX CSE. I also expec to attend a baseball game. I yeah, I will also go to the sessions that are interesting...

Next year, I plan to be ready with a presentation early, so that I don't miss the call for papers. I will be a part of the solution, and get a presentation that's not on a beginner level.

I got one right...

Last week I signed up for Ken Jennings weekly trivia quiz. (This week it was supposed to be easy.) I guessed on all the answers, and at the end of my responses, let him know that they were all guesses, and gave him a final one - that I would get them all wrong.

I got an email back from him today, his reply was that I was now 1 for 8...

Maybe I'll do a little better this week.

Stake Presidency Home Evening

We had Family Home Evening with the whole Stake Presidency tonight. It was nice. The President's family has a cabin up the canyon, we went up for a little BBQ, (Hamburgers and Sausages), then we watched a slide show on President Monsivais' trip to Jerusalem. (He went 2 weeks ago. Not the best timing, but he stayed safe.)

The pictures were interesting, but the girls didn't really last through the whole thing. Ruth went first, she was really tired. By the end of the slides, all 4 of them were outside with me, we ended up in the car listening to Veggietales.

I think everyone enjoyed themselves. It would be nice to have a little cabin like that up a canyon to visit from time to time, maybe someday...

Substitute Salsa

The other day, I bought 3 bags of tortilla chips, and some salsa. The salsa did not last through the first bag. (This shouldn't suprise anyone.)

Not having any salsa, but having 2 bags of chips, I had to make other arraingments. This evening, I cooked some rice, and in it I tossed the following: (While cooking)

• butter
• salt and pepper
• chopped cilantr0
• chopped garlic
• yellow pear tomatoes
• orange cherry tomatoes
• ruby red cherry tomatoes

Well, I think it went pretty well. I liked it. I can't give you any independant verification, because I am the only one here, and ate it all. You'll just have to trust me.

Bullseye

Does our new car have a bulls eye on it somewhere? In the past 10 days, we have had the previously mentioned ding in it, now yesterday, a rock jumped up and chipped the window. These types of things did not happen to our old car. Maybe it's the tinting (Tara's theory.), they figure it's not got tinting, so we must not care if they mess up our car.

Anyway, please don't aim for that bulls eye...

Demolition Derby

Tara was gone 20 minutes too long this afternoon, and I started to tear apart our closets. I have no 'before' pictures, I didn't think of it until it was too late. All I have is 'now'.

I plan to bring the left end into the right end, giving us a little more room. The 2 closets were seperated, in the end they will be on closet. I plan to put in a bunch of shelves, and 2 rows for hanger space. Stay tuned for more details as they come. I am not sure that Tara's too happy that I did it, but by the time she saw it, it was too late. Mostly I think she was upset that I did not move anything out of the closet before I started.

(It turns out that PhotoBlogger is down, so you don't even get a 'now' picture. I will try posting it another time.)

Restaurant Review

The Creamery

For those out there wondering, the Creamery's kids meal is one of the best deals out there. A burger, some fries, a small drink, and an ice cream - $2.79. Ok, so it's not the normal portions I usually eat, but when the girls (4 other kids meals) don't eat all of theirs, the cracks eventually get filled. Today's victim was Emma. She wasn't all that interested in eating anyway, I must have eaten a 1/3 of her dinner.

The ice cream, as always, was good. I had Strawberry, then some of Emma's Cherry Cordial.

Welcome home

This morning went I left for work, the girls realized I was home. I got the following:

Kate - A handmade card and a hug.
Mary - A big hug and a little dance.
Emma - Pointed at me until I pointed back at her.
Ruth - Handed me her empty bottle.

I guess you can't win them all...

Green can

The green garbage can showed up today. (Still no sign of the blue one.) I know what you're going to say, it's already been said: "How can you tell which one's green and which one's blue?" Some people just have no respect for the color blind.

The green can is for yard waste. I filled the green can today. I think from now until Winter, it will be continually full of branches, leaves, and grass. I've got several piles of it.

Anyway, we signed up for the "3 can plan." Our garbage can was continually full, we had to do something. (I blame it on diapers...)

Fun at the airport

Last night, we got in to the airport on time. Having done this, we thought we were doing pretty good. We got our luggage and went to see if Tara was outside looking for us. Then I saw the flaw in the plan. There were a millon people out there.

Previously we arraigned to have Tara take a pass outside and then go park. We didn't want to have her wandering the airport looking for us, so we went back in to head to the parking lot. At the parking lot, a car had lost the contents of it's gas tank. I dont know if they had a leak or some sort of structure failure, but hazmat was there, and they had thrown lots of sand down. They had just started sweeping it up.

Being on foot, and not able to see the big picture, we didn't know of the giant traffic jam getting into the airport. It didn't clear up until after hazmat had left. Things were pretty interesting out there.

3 hours after we flew over our house, we got home...

The weather here is nice...

It's really out here in Ft. Collins. Not too hot, not too cool, that kind of thing. I guess I shouldn't say that, concidering what happened yesterday back home...

They had a freak storm blow through town, and really made a mess. Planes at the airport were tossed around like little kids' gliders. They had 168 power poles broken and snapped, according to a very reliable source. (The paper said 50...) I talked to Drew today, they still have a section of town evacuated, they likely won't have power for a week. I talked to Sorrel, who lives down near there, he didn't get evacuated, but has no power. He is having B-B-Que for every meal. Sorrel said that a bunch of people on his street are freaking out, his response is that they have been told for a long time to have a year's supply, this is just a warm up for the real thing.

Tara and the girls are fine, don't worry. The storm headed our direction, I guess, but didn't get the power it had on the other side of town. Tara says she went out and didn't see anything wrong, even the garden looks ok. I'll give my secondary assessment on Friday...

I'd like to publically thank Tom and Drew for going by and checking on Tara and the girls. Thanks.

Book Review

I sing the Body Electric
Ray Bradbury

I picked this up looking for Fahrenheit 451, there were no copies of that, so I got this one. I had read it many many years ago, and had forgotten most of the stories.

What term would I use for a book of short stories by Ray Bradbury? I would use the term 'interesting' or maybe 'that was random'. How does some one come up with stories like he does. Maybe he had very interesting dreams that he always remembered.

Anyway, it was a good book, I liked the one about the Rorschach shirt.