More fun than a barrel of monkeys

We had a monkey infestation problem in the back room tonight. Here are a couple of pictures of them swinging from the rafters. Luckily, the girls were asleep, so they won't get any bright ideas out of this... The fan was on, not that you can tell because of the fast shutter speed on the camera...

Daylight Savings ends.

At least for now. I have talked about the stupidity of this before. I still don't see why we go through with this all the time.

Now I have to remember to install a patch on my servers at work before March, so they get the updated Timezone for the "new and improved" DST.

I did get a small amount of fun out of it today, though. After setting all the clocks back tonight, (or in the case of the grandfather clock, I had to set it forward 23 hours...) the phone rang. I answered "Dailylight Savings police, how can I direct your call." Drew, on the other end said "How did you know?" I asked what he meant, he said "Is it tonight or tomorrow night?" Hilarious. It's just going to encourage me to make up random things to say when I answer the phone more often...

Book Report

The Kingdon and the Crown - Volume 3
Behold The Man
by Gerald Lund


I read the first 2 books in this set about 18 months ago or so. I wasn't sure how much I liked them at the time. (Don't get me wrong, they were interesting, just something about them rubbed me different.) Anyway, at the time, I wasn't burning to get my hands on the 3rd book to see how it ended. (I think it likely had something to do with the fact that everyone was talking about the movie The Passion of the Christ, I figured I had the New Testament, and The Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine and Covenants, etc, I knew how the story played out to this point, and had other things to do than to run out and get the 3rd book to read it. Maybe I just have an aversion to book collections of fictional histories, placing fake people in 'real' stories, and making stuff up. Maybe I have an aversion to things that take multiple thick books to get through, like Abstract Algebra or the encylopedia.) The book didn't get read, but I was in the library a week ago gettinga book for Tara, and quickly browsed through the Sampler collection, and picked this book up.

Anyway, I think I liked this book better than the first two. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that he finished writing the book after his call as a Seventy. (Am I just making this fact up?)

The book deals with the last year of the Savior's life. (through the eyes of the fictional family devised to tell the story.) At least half the book covered the last week or ten days of the Savior's mortal ministry.

Anyway, I liked how the author wrote this book, he seems to have been more careful about twisting quotes away from the things written in the New Testament. (Am I remembering that wrong too? It seems like I remember it bothering me that he didn't use direct quotes from the Savior in the 1st two books, but worded things different. Maybe that was something else I was thinking of. This book makes me want to dig out my copy of Jesus the Christ and re-read it, and possibly be ready to fully participate in Sunday School next year. (But don't hold your breath on that one just yet.)

Shake your Tailfeather

Emma - Shaking her tailfeather

Emma - Doing a little dance to a little Ray Charles

I'm not sure if this will play properly in Linux or not, it depends if the html is written correctly. If not, click the link above the play window to see the video.

DVD Box Set review

Justice League
Season 2

Twilight {Maybe just the older girls} Braniac and Darkseid, and Superman gets ticked off
Tabula Rasa {Good to go} Amazo
Only a Dream {No Way} Episode deals with guy who can control peoples dreams, turning them into nightmares. Most definitely one the girls should not watch.
Maid of Honor {Good to go}
Hearts and Minds {Maybe just the older girls}
A Better World {ok}
Eclipsed {ok}
The Terror Beyond {Maybe just the older girls}
Hereafter {Good to go} Unless you have an aversion to giant cartoon cockroaches
Secret Society {ok}
Comfort and Joy {Good to go}
Wild Card {maybe just the older girls} Episode does ok until the every end
Starcrossed {ok}

DVD Box Set review

Justice League
Season 1

Secret Origins {ok} Aliens attack Earth
In Blackest Night {ok} Green Lanterns vs. Manhunters
The Enemy Below {Good to go} Aquaman
Injustice for All {ok} Shoutout to "Superfriends", but with no sign of Gleek.
Paradise Lost {Maybe just the older girls} Mythological monsters
War World {Maybe just the older girls} Lots of fighting
The Brave and the Bold {Good to go} Talking gorillas, one of them gives my favorite quote on the whole set - "Get your paws off me, you stinking human!"
Fury {ok}
Legends {Good to go} Works very well until the very end, when the little kid gets weird
A Knights with Shadows {Maybe just the older girls}
Metamorphosis {Good to go}
The Savage Time {Good to go}

DVD Box Set review

Superman: The Animated Series
Volume 3

Warrior Queen {Good to go}
Apokolips...Now! 1&2 {Maybe just the older girls}
Little Girl Lost 1&2 {Good to go} Supergirl
Where there's smoke {Good to go}
Knight Time {Good to go} Superman pretends to be Batman
New Kids in Town {Good to go}
Obsession {ok} The Toyman again
Little Big Head {Good to go}
Absolute Power {Good to go}
In Brightest Day {Good to go} Green Lantern - Kyle Raynor, not John Stewart, by the way.
Superman's Pal {Good to go}
Fish Story {Good to go} Aquaman
Unity {No way} Kind of weird really.
The Demon Reborn {ok} Batman revisits
Legacy {Maybe just the older girls} Superman brainwashed by Darkseid

DVD Box Set review

Superman: The Animated Series
Volume 2

Identity Crisis {Good to go} Bizarro
Target {ok}
Action Figures {ok}
Mxyzpixilated {Good to go} Or as the girls at times say "Little Big Head Man", but that's an episode on the 3rd disk.
Double Dose {ok} Livewire's annoying voice again
Solar Power {Good to go}
Monkey Fun {Good to go} Big giant monkey. Kind of silly.
Brave New Metropolis {Good to go}
Ghost in the Machine {ok}
World's Finest 1-3 {Good to go} Batman, the Joker, and a big kryptonite dragon
Father's Day {ok}
The Hand of Fate {no way} Monster that changes people into fellow monsters.
Bizarro's World {Good to go}
Prototype {Good to go}
The Late Mr. Kent {Good to go}
Heavy Metal {Good to go} Steel

DVD Box Set review

New feature, in honor of the fact that our DVD player is broken.
Format is:

Episode Name {kid friendliness rating} comments

This is partly so that Tara can keep track of which episodes to not show our girls... Kid friendliness ratings are {good to go} {ok} {maybe just the older girls} and {no way}.

First up: Superman: The Animated Series

Volume 1

The Last Son of Krypton 1-3 {Good to go}
Fun and Games {ok} Toyman
A Little Piece of Home {Good to go}
Feeding Time {ok} The Parasite
The Way of All Flesh {ok} Metallo
Stolen Memories {ok} Braniac
The Main Man 1&2 {ok} Lobo
My Girl {ok}
Tools of the Trade {Maybe just the older girls} All episodes with Darkseid get this rating, really.
Two's a Crowd {Good to go}
The Prometheon {ok} Big Monster
Blasts from the Past 1&2 {Good to go}
Livewire {ok} OK rating only because Livewire's voice really annoys me.
Speed Demons {Good to go} Episode with The Flash

Dead DVD player

Our DVD player is dead. I don't know why, we only use it about 25 hours a week... (The hidden cost of Netflix.)

You open up the door, insert the DVD, and it says "No Disk". Just sits there with that stupid little look on it's face, not doing anything. It's really irritating.

I called Samsung, we bought the thing at the end of last November. They had us try a couple of things, then fairly quickly indicated it needed to come in for repair, if they couldn't repair it, they would replace it. I have to fax in our receipt, because by serial number, the warrentee expired in September, but they will extend it out 3 months past now if I can prove I bought it when I did. (Nice.) They are not charging for labor, their website says it's only 3 months parts and labor, 12 months parts, but I have to assume (based in part on what I saw from comments on other sites) that they have had problems with these machines, and loosened up their policy. I'm not going to complain, especially if we get a new model machine.

It's a DVD/VCR combo, and the whole thing has to go back. The girls may start having DT's because they can't watch their shows. Maybe their rooms will finally get cleaned.

For now, we are using my $4000 DVD player to watch DVDs. (Laptop) I meant to fax the thing today, but I am still home sick. Maybe I'll get off my rear end and do it later. I want to fax it in, and get the warentee verified before I ship off the unit to the repair center. (The VCR side still works, the girls get a few day reprive.)

In the meantime, I just removed the DVD enttitlement to the girl's Netflix profile, and added it to mine. No reordering of the queue or anything was required. Nice.

You can't even tell I raked the leaves yesterday...

And yes, that is snow falling...

Sometimes I just wait for all the leaves to fall, but I had a delusion yesterday that I would also mow the lawn. Other times I just wait for a windstorm to blow the leaves away.

Phone Service

I got another letter today for one of the other 2 guys in town with the same name as me. (One is a nearly deadbeat landlord guy that's often at the City Council meetings wearing his scouting shirt yelling about something or the other. The other is a student that has something like 20 Credit cards all with $350-500 he owes on them, or so it appears.) Anyway, this one was for the guy that owns property, it was from a law firm in Indiana looking for $1700 from him for a tree that fell. They called last week, I helped them try to understand I'm not the guy they are looking for. I called back today, they appologized for the mistake and told me to ignore the letter.

This is the last straw. It' time to go back to an unlisted number again. I never had any of these troubles before when I was unlisted.

I have been thinking for a while that I would like to get Caller ID and Call Waiting. We currently just have a basic plan, $25 a month after taxes, fees, and whatever else the phone company decides to tack on for that month.

Our current phone company, Comcast, has us grandfathered into the old plan. To add services, we would have to switch to the current plan, and basic phone, Caller ID & Call Waiting is $39 (After tax). They have a plan with VM, free long distance and everything else for $46. (After tax) With Comcast, unlisted (really unpublished, which means no 411) is $1.80 a month.

Our ISP also does phone service, they just have one plan, it include VM, caller ID, call waiting, and all the other bells and whistles, it's $25 + taxes and fees. (I figure at most $35.) Unlisted number is free.

I called the ISP back to sign up for the service, they said it would be $50 to roll their truck, and $25 for the intallation. I told the girl that I didn't want to do that, she put me on hold to talk to her supervisor about it. After a few minutes she came back and said that they could give me a free month of Internet service, but that was all they could do. I didn't sign up as a result, but told her that if they ever changed their mind and were ready to do free installation, they could call me back and I would do it. (It's also combined billing, which would be a pain, since work pays my internet for me...)

The do free initial installation, it turns out that's the very first time they come to set up services at the house. (For me, this was when I switched my internet service to them) Had I done all the services at once, it would have been free installation. No one told me then that was how it worked. I'm thinking about sending in a letter to the ISP...

Anyway, I called Comcast back, and just got the $1.80 unpublished number. In a week or 2, they will be by to your house to cross our number out of your phone book...

ISP filter

Looks like our ISP has put a filter on photos.blogger.com

So, I can post pictures, I just can't look at said pictures from home. Or at least Tara can't, because she can't remember the password to bypass the filter...

Anyway, it doesn't look like it effects the posting of the pictures, just the viewing of them.

Just another thing to throw on the pile when I get around to call the ISP. (The really annoying proxy problem they had appears to have been resolved, I haven't seen it in a little while, so my impetus to call is low right now.)

Reading Blog

I have 35 posts queued up in Kate's reading blog. Stay tuned there for the reports. (I just need to get her to add her comments, but the posts are ready with pictures, where I could find them.)

It gets updated so infrequently, I thought I'd let you know.

Just another typical Monday

I decided to go to work this morning, I woke up with some breathing problems, and didn't necessarily want to go in, but I figured there were already things piling up and I needed to get some stuff do, so I went in.

The first person who came in wanted to know how to trace a network connection. My response was that if he had shown up for the training class I did 4 times in the last 2 years, he would have known. (His team was the one who begged me to do it the 4th time, and promised they would show up, only 2 made their way to the class.) The guy next to me ended up helping him with his problem.

Knee deep in fixing stuff, someone else barged in demanding that I look at her problem immediately.

Background: We have been asking her to move her application from an older machine to a newer one for a few months. She finally got around to looking at it 2 weeks ago, and went (basically) nuts demanding an extra machine to make the move happen. We simply did not have another machine to use. The MTC surplused a machine a few weeks ago, I found it picking through the surplus warehouse salvaging ethernet cards out of some servers for another server move that needed to happen.

Anyway, I appropriated (5 finger discount) the "new" (old) machine, and started working on it. This lady heard about it and was in my office every 2 hours asking if it was done. Finally, Monday afternoon, she sent an email asking when it would be done, I explained the work left and told her she would have to be patient. Her response was that "they would just have to make do." I bent over backwords and spent a lot of time between Monday, Monday evening, and all day Tuesday to get the machine done. An email was sent back saying it was ready, she came in once to get a password reset, and I didn't hear anything more until today. (6 days later) Suddenly, it's an emergency for her again, but I know for a fact that she didn't log into the machine between Tuesday and today. (I had been checking last week to see, because I hadn't heard anything.)

Well, not so much as a thank you for the work, and their impatience at the beginning of last week obviously was just noise. Having other work to do today, and not breathing well, I was not in the mood to deal with her. (Hardware failure on one machine, web servers acting funny after a change last week, HW team needing help with something, that kind of normal Monday activity.) She started getting belligerent, and I got really belligerent. She left upset, I immediately got over it and got back to work.

Well, I'm sure she's still mad. People have said that she's never talking to me again. (She said that 8 years ago, when I refused to go into the old Data Center on Saturday night and all day Sunday just to load tapes for her, way outside our normal operating procedure at the time.)

I don't particularly care today. I'm pretty tired of people who make mountains out of molehills. She has some sort of application problem, I don't plan to do a whole lot about it in the next couple of days. In fact, if I'm not breathing very well, I don't plan to really go into work at all at this point. Maybe I can get the guys in the office to be mysterious about my whereabouts and start some rumors...

Anyway, I should probably be a nicer person, but I don't feel like it right now.

Thumb Sucker

Ruth is a thumb sucker. We have made no effort to hide this fact, or discourage it.

Tara found a pacifier in a box last week, washed it, and gave it to Ruth. Ruth had absolutely no idea what the thing could have been for.

When you give it to her, she carries it around and tries to figure out what to do with it. Tara tried to put it in Ruth's mouth today, she ripped it out and threw it away.

I still say thumb sucking is better that someone who constantly looses their pacifer, then screams until you go to the store and buy a new one...

Not the reaction I was looking for

We got a new home teacher today, he's only been in the ward since the beginning of the semester. He called to make an appointment today:

Him: "I'm your new HT, I haven't been in the ward that long."
Me: "And you don't know who I am, you haven't seen me at church." (In a joking tone of voice)
Him: "... I guess I don't get the joke."
Me: "Well, I haven't been in Priesthood much lately."
Him: "Would you accept HT to come by and visit? Is that ok?"
Me: "Sure. When?"
Him: "How about the 5th?"
Me: "That's the 8th Ward conference, that should be ok."
Him: "We had ward conference last week."
Me: "The 8th ward has their conference that day. I'm the Stake Executive Secretary, I have to go to all of them. That's part of the reason for my spotty attendance at Priesthood."
Him: "Oh."

Anyway, I think we got off on the wrong foot. I think for a while there he was worried they wouldn't be able to come visit or get us to come to church. It should be all cleared up by the time they visit. Maybe.

90 seconds of fun

90 seconds of fun:

Let the girls try to say Mxyzptlk without prompting for correctness:

"Mix"
"Mixy"
"Spit"
"Trixy"
"Mrs"

Maybe it was just me.

Homecoming parade

I took the girls to the homecoming parade. This year we made no effort to go get free pancakes, as in years past, it just wasn't worth the hassle (with 4 of them and just me.)

This year we picked a spot not near any parking or apartments. In years past, we have been near one of these places, and people ended up all around us. This makes it harder for the girls to get the candy people in the parade throw. This year, we were all alone in our little section. The girls enjoyed it.

Since we were the only ones standing there, everyone looked over at the gorls, who waved and charmed their way into a lot of candy. Luckily, I was wearing cargo pants, they filled them with candy.

There was too much candy to fit in our candy jar, but that didn't really stop us...

Ruth really enjoyed the candy, that's not blood or anything, it's an A&W Root Beer candy... They all got baths after the parade.

Back in the day, the parade went right by Rob and Russ's bedroom window. In those days, watching the parade, and begging for free stuff was a much warmer experience....

Discussion with a 3 year old

Walking home with Emma last night, she wanted to go to the store. I asked her what she wanted to get at the store. Her list is as follows:

"Cookies, and bananas. We don't have any of those. Bread. And Butter. And Jelly. bananas. We need bananas."

Any idea what Emma likes to eat?

Giving up

I am now officially out of the "using a USB drive as my primary document repository business.

I forgot it at home today, now I am a little hamstrung with some stuff I was working on. I have now created the same directory structure on my laptop, and as soon as I get the thing, will copy everything in it to my laptop. I plan to us the USB as a transfer enablement tool

You would think I would learn the first 100 times I have misplaced the drive.

The one I have as completely fallen apart twice since I have had it. The cover just falls to pieces. I am thinking about finding that old Star Trek communicator thing I had, taking it apart, and housing the USB inside of it. If I get it done, the picture will be here.

Still trying to get those guys.

SO, the FBI and the Post Office so not want to talk to me, until I'm stupid enough to loose thousands of dollars to that scam.

I found someone who is happy to do something, it's the State Division of Consumer Protection. I'm going to file a complaint with them, and see what happens.

Word Verification

I am still being prompted for Word Verification when I create posts. Who is it out there that keeps marking me as objectional content? Come on, fess up.

Election Judge training

Today was Election Judge training for the election in a couple of weeks. It's always the same, an hour of boring lecture they could get through in 15 minutes if there wasn't people there who just can't seem to grasp the concept.

This year they have thrown a new factor into the equation. We are doing electronic voting, and have these machines that people need to be familiar with. This adds 90 minutes to the training.

Now, this stuff is nothing to get worked up about. The instructions they provide for the workers at election time takes them step by step through the entire process. Nothing at all to worry about. (And it's really not that complicated...) Anyway, you should have seen the looks of sheer terror and panic on the faces of some of these old ladies who are so afraid of the machines they don't even what to touch them. Sheer panic. I imagine they will do just fine, but every election I wonder if some of those precincts ever mess things up beyond all recognition. It's amazing the election process works at all the way some of these election workers all. I have no doubt that it wasn't just the voters who fouled up South Florida so bad a few years back, I'm sure the election workers (needlessly) complicated things then.

Anyway, they made me the Poll Manager this time also. This means I get to run the show over in our polling place. We'll get it right. (See, I'm brimming with confidence...) I just have to figure out how many machines they are sending us, and talk to the school about where in the world they can stick us, I don't think we will fit in the hallway...

McDonald's

Emma is with me tonight, Tara has taken the rest of the girls and joined a quilting circus of some sort. Emma wanted to go to McDonald's for dinner, so we did. She even cleaned up all the stuff she made a mess with in the office here (in a hurry) so that we could go. Sometimes the only necessary motivation is a little food.

Anyway, this McDonald's has a playland. It's basically just a couple of climbs and one slide. Not much to speak of, but Emma enjoyed herself, anyway.

Now we are back at work, and Emma of course wanted a treat out of the vending machine. (The happy meal was too much food for her, but she's got plenty of room for an entire package of M&M's.)

I guess that's how it goes sometimes with a three year old.

Oh yeah, I am now up to $2 in Best Buy bucks. Anyone out there collecting them for me?

Power Outage

We have a stereo system in our bedroom. The time has not been set on the display for over a year. The reason is that every time I set the thing, we have a power outage shortly after which resets the stupid thing. Last night I got tired of looking at it and not getting the time from it. This was nice this morning to wake up, look up there, and see the time.

This afternoon, we had a power outage, the time is no longer there.

That's right, everyone in town can blame me for that little power blip...

Usury

The place I went this morning with that check was one of those check cashing places, where you can get payday loans. (I didn't really want to be anywhere near my bank with that check, I really didn't want them doing something stupid like depositing it in my account or something.)

Anyway, this place charges 414% interest on payday loans. (414%!)

There was a guy that came in to pay down $2000 of his $5000 balance. While I was sitting waiting for Kate to come out of school I thought about that a little. The guy was paying something like $60 a day in interest. (That's larger than any per diem I would get for travel in the US.) Now he's down around $36, which still seems like way to much money to be burning through.

To top it off, he seemed to be a neighbor of one of the people working there. They seemed to be on friendly terms. It seems odd, you'd think there would be some sort of tension or awkwardness there, but there didn't seem to be. ("You work at the place that charges me more in interest than I could spend in gas driving around all day, how are things?")

I'm just glad that the only thing I have ever had to do with one of those places is walking in today to see what would happen with that check.

It's too bad I'm not the victim of a crime yet.

Although I have had several offers here in the office this morning...

I found the letter and check from the contest I 'won' yesterday on desk. I took the check in to a place this morning, they called Wachovia bank, the account on the check is non-existant. They kept the check, and gave me a copy.

I went to the post office to see about talking to a postal inspector about the letter. It turns out that there is not a local person. I got tired of trolling through their phone system trying to get to a human. (And netflix is considered a letter. Drop it in the 'letters' drop box.)

I went to the local FBI office. I was talking to the guy through the window, he asked me in. After I came in and we started talking, he asked if I had any guns, knives, or other weapons. I said no, which really is the only right answer in that situation in that case. He asked if I had lost any money, I hadn't, so there was really nothing the FBI could do. (Something about people who had lost $1,000,000 vs someone who had lost $0.) I asked if the Postal Service would do anything, he thought they wouldn't because I hadn't lost any money. He suggested I file a claim at the Internet Crime Complaint Center. I really haven't been a victim of a crime, and so far, it hasn't been a electronic crime, so there's not a whole lot for me to do.

Maybe I should contact some publishing companies to see if they want me to write a book on tracking down these guys. If they were to give me a stipend in advance of writing, I'd have some money to take a trip to Ontario... (To chase things down.)

Joke I just heard

A police recruit was asked during the exam, "What would you do if you had to arrest your own mother?" He said, "Call for backup."

Checking out books from the library

When I go to the Campus Library, I am always looking for a specific book. The place is just way to large to do anything else.

When I go to the City Library, I usually just circle the New Nonfiction display once, and once in a while walk through the Biography section, then visit the Comic Books. That about wraps up the trip for me.

I haven't been to the library in a while. I guess I'm just too lazy to get over there.

I have been trying to figure out today how to get their online catalog to give me all nonfiction books they have, published this year. So far I haven't had much success, but got it to list tons of travel books. "The encyclopedia of electronic circuits" sounds interesting, though. I think their search engine is broken.

Maybe I should stop being lazy and just go over there one of these days.

Our libraries definition of non-fiction

Superman lives! [sound recording] / BBC Enterprises Ltd. ; written and directed by Dirk Maggs

City Library

COMPACT DISCS - NONFICTION

822.914 MAG 2005

Checked out

10/14/2006

Hey, I know the difference between Fiction and Reality, most of the time. It looks like one of the librarians has stepped over the edge.

dessert in the desert

Clothing Catastrophe

I did a load of laundry today, and upon pulling it out of the dryer, discovered a disaster. Little sploches of color was everywhere on the clothes. This load included: all but one pair of my pants, several shirts I like to wear, 4 of Tara's pregnancy shirts, one of her pregnancy dresses, and assorted clothes from Emma and Ruth. We think it was the clothes from Ruth that got us, we found 2 wrappers from crayons in the load. It looks like there were at least 3 crayons that melted in the dryer and dripped all over the clothes.

Crayola's suggestion involves wd-40, that would have taken forever with the amount of marks. Someone else suggested ColdWater Tide, so we went and got some. After several washings, it looks like I got 1 pair of pants back, maybe 2 (It's in drying now, we'll see what it looks like soon.)

I have several pairs of pants that are now to the wd-40 stage. Many spots are gone, there are a few signifigant spots remaining. Tara's dress looks like it might only have a few spots left on it. (To the wd-40 pile with it.) Tara's 4 shirts look bad. One only has one spot, the others are ruined.

My Superman shirt only has a few spots left on it, I really can't see them, so I'm goingt o keep wearing the shirt.

My Mr. Incredible shirt had all the spots come out of the fabric, none of them come out of the picture. It looks like his face is all bloodied, it's really not the look I am going for when I wear the shirt. I tried taking a Mister Clean Magic Eraser to it, but the shirt just shredded the Magic Eraser, and did nothing to the stains. That guy really is nearly invulnerable...

Maybe a few of the things in the dryer will come out spot free, but I'm not holding my breath at this point. Anyway, this year for Christmas, when I say all I need is pants, I really mean it this time. I guess I didn't need a new closet after all.

Another reason to not live in Buffalo

On Dave's blog, he has a couple of pictures dating back to yesterday morning. The first is of a rain storm where a few pieces of ice/snow/hail/something solid had landed on the back of his truck. His comment was that it wasn't really sticking.

An hour and a half later, he had a picture of a 1/4 inch of snowdrift by a building. He said he much have been wrong about the sticking part.

Well, Dave should have had a barometer with him (Ask me another time of some ways you I can remember to check the height of a building with a barometer...) because it snowed like crazy in Buffalo yesterday and today.

The power is out at my parents house. They lost lots of tree limbs. There was a driving ban in the city. The Interstate was closed for 100 miles, with people stranded all along it. (People in snowmobiles were taking them food and supplies.) All that, and it's only October 15th!

Now, I know it will melt. And make a bigger mess as it's melting. I'm glad I'm not in it, even if it doesn't should much sympathy or support for those who are. (I did call to check on them, by the way, they are all ok. Missy still has to go to work at the zoo...)

Anyway, it has been nice here. And I have shoveled maybe a dozen times in the last 13 years. I really don't miss it.

Now, having said that, we'll have the wettest, snowest Winter on record here. When that happens, blame me.

diapers

Emma is in the process of getting potty trained. From my remote "that nice that it's happening" view, it seems to be going pretty well. (Tara may have a different opinion, but Emma seems to think it's going well.)

This is nice. I was worried for a little bit there we might have to be buying 3 different sizes of diapers when the baby comes. This is not such a cheap thing. We have been buying 2 sets of diapers for the past 5 years. It's kind of like (financially, anyway) having a smoking habit. (In a "1/2 a pack bought on an Indian reservation, and not taxed by the state" sort of way.)

Some day, we will be down to 1 set at a time, then finally down to not having to buy diapers at all. Now I know where people come up with the money for things like a new car for their mid life crisis, college tuition, weddings, etc. They just move from spending diaper money to doing these other things.

I plan to get a metallic blue one that handles and curves turns really nicely. A sun roof is a requirement. (Especially since I will be bald by then, so Tara, don't worry, there's plenty of time before it happens...)

What I would like to see is all the diapers we have ever thrown out (still sealed up, of course), lined end to end or stacked in a cube. That would be an impressive sight.

Normal. Certifiably.

The blogger team has decided that this is a normal blog. They plan to turn the step locks back off. It's still there right now, but they say they will do it.

We went to Tucanos for lunch today, the girls wanted to buy my lunch. We were eating, an in walked Earl. We hadn't seen Earl in a while. Earl was coming to meet Bruce, they were there to celebrate the Yankees being kicked out of the playoffs. Bruce seemed pretty happy about it.

I accidentally made the mistake of telling Bruce that Christine Brinton was in town. (We were talking about people who were in town, it seemed like a natural thing to say.) Bruce was stone faced. It took him a few seconds to say anything. After he went back to his table, Tara reminded me that he and Christine dated pretty seriously. Whoops. The way I figure it, Brice is married with 3 kids, he should be over it by now. If someone asked me about some girl I dated by name, it might take me a few minutes even to figure out who they were talking about. It's just a bad sector on disk. (No need to keep up with those people, right?)

Anyway, everyone seemed to enjoy lunch. Kate was just in it for the sausage.

The bad boy of blogging

Looks like I am still on the '(potentially) bad' list of bloggers. That's fine. They probably looked at my last post and figured I didn't deserve to get the setting taken off. Or they are at least dragging their feet about it. I would do the exact same thing in their position...

Tara was called by Barnes and Noble tonight, they invited her and Kate to the "Series of Unfortunate Events" party. They told her they would put her on the media list. I'm thinking that means free stuff. And food.

One of our High Council sold his house. They are now looking for a house in the Stake to move into. It turns out that someone made them an offer, they put the price high enough that they figured it wouldn't sell right away, but it did. Then they decided that maybe they didn't really want to move. His wife tried several times to talk the buyers out of their offer, but they keep refusing, and really want the house. He told the Stake President tonight he would even take a place at "Shady Acres" if he could get it. The President asked what Shady Acres was, it was a reference to a name I gave a place when this High Councilor was one of my counselors in the Elder's Quorum presidency. We have a little apartment complex associated with the State Hospital, I could never remember the name of it, and for a while, called it Shady Acres.

I told everyone standing there that Tara has worked for 8 long years trying to refine me, and get me to reform just a little, but the patient so far has been rejecting the transplant...

I told the new counselor in the Stake Presidency that I had 1 bathroom with 4 going on 5 girls in the house, he really felt sorry for me. At some point I need to built a new mega-bathroom. It would include several toilets, a giant mirror, several sinks, and several showers. There is one like this at Spring Haven Lodge that I'm thinking about. It includes also lots of storage space, that sort of thing. Some day when I have some money lying around, I will consider it seriously...

Spam Blog

I currently have to do a Word Verification in order to create posts on my blog. It appears that Blogger's bots have decided that my blog was engaged in "Spam Blogging".

In their words: "Blogs engaged in this behavior are called spam blogs, and can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site." Well, I don't think it's a bad thing, they have to protect their server/storage resources from junky spammer blogs. (Like the ones with a normal title, but you go to it and it's really an ad page for laser hair removal or a page that lists all the different ways you can buy tofu lawn ornaments.)

Now, some of you out there will agree with them that some of what I say makes no sense at all. There's nothing I can do about that. That's just the way I am. Ask my parents. Or my wife. As far as irrelevant, I won't object to that either. I take exception to repetitive, with the exception of that Goal Update I was doing earlier in the year (I owe an update on that one), My "Game Time" feature, and the "Book Review" I occasionally do. (But I haven't been doing book reviews for comic books, and that's the only kind of book I read these days...)

Anyway, I went to a page where I signed up to have someone review the blog and get back to me. We'll see what they say. (They may agree with the nonsensical text part, too.)

I guess there is a "Flag as Objectionable" button at the top of each blog. Maybe Rob didn't like the crack about his being bad luck and Objected. I still haven't ruled him out as the one who put me on the Terror Watch List. :)

Sorry about the split names

I had to fiddle with the charts and split a number of the names to get Internet Explorer to not drop the sidebar to the bottom. (Firefox just ignored it and merged the 2.)

Anyway, if someone took offense to their name being split in two, or being left of the list, you know where to leave a comment...

But Emily doesn't have 4 letters...

In this week's trivia contest, Ken Jennings asked what baby girl's name has been the most popular one register with the Social Security service over the past 10 years. That one's easy, it's Emily, I assume for all those (like Tara) Emily Dickinson fans out there. (#1 for 10 years...)

That got me to thinking, what's actually out there? So, after finishing with the trivia questions and sending them off about an hour ago, I have been looking through the names. Names like Seven are not on the 1000 most popular. I guess "Seinfeld" and "Star Trek Voyager" just didn't get the job done, although Kate has a friend named Seven, and I didn't even want to try for Five. (Beta was also not on the list for some reason.)

	Emma	Kate	Mary	Ruth	Tara	Lily	Amy	Kay lyn	Mel issa	Pam ela
2005	2	140	73	351	340	39	111	664	104	619
2004	2	147	62	351	322	52	106	690	99	528
2003	2	161	59	353	336	69	119	646	96	447
2002	4	193	51	338	295	79	109	600	80	514
2001	13	200	49	331	272	103	114	644	74	482
2000	17	225	47	344	239	124	106	588	71	456
1999	17	229	45	350	231	152	105	568	64	422
1998	22	272	45	346	189	169	96	561	59	388
1997	36	323	46	336	172	219	92	519	45	360
1996	53	344	44	351	167	261	88	556	42	341
1995	67	364	40	323	158	319	76	546	35	384
1994	76	352	37	331	146	392	77	536	31	350
1993	81	335	38	316	132	452	65	590	30	324
1992	104	325	37	323	118	471	51	595	24	303
1991	123	285	38	287	104	504	43	724	20	259

As you can see, some of these names are losing ground. If it were not nearly 2am, I would be tempted to see how long I predict before names like "Tara", "Melissa", and "Pamela" come off the list (of 1000 most popular).

	John	Robert	And rew	David	Adam	Tho mas	Rod erick	Ron ald	Russ ell	Jona than	Scott	Ethan
2005	18	39	6	14	64	40	782	256	394	19	235	5
2004	18	36	6	14	58	37	720	232	365	21	214	5
2003	17	35	5	14	58	36	746	239	346	22	207	6
2002	17	34	6	13	55	36	636	227	328	21	185	5
2001	14	30	7	12	51	33	653	212	307	23	167	17
2000	14	29	7	16	45	33	613	203	320	21	158	25
1999	15	26	7	16	44	31	588	186	325	22	140	37
1998	15	23	9	13	45	31	627	182	300	21	123	38
1997	15	23	8	14	39	31	550	164	258	21	113	46
1996	15	23	10	13	39	28	537	156	260	21	108	62
1995	13	22	11	16	38	27	513	146	239	23	91	75
1994	15	21	10	13	38	27	486	137	233	23	79	89
1993	16	17	10	11	39	27	447	122	201	22	69	92
1992	14	17	5	10	36	27	431	112	185	21	61	76
1991	10	13	5	8	36	28	418	101	174	20	57	65

Some names, especially those tied to the Bible, seem to stick around. (And that's why my name is on the Terror Watch List...)

	Faith	Hope	Charity	Grace
2005	51	184	654	14
2004	53	180	571	13
2003	50	172	529	13
2002	48	160	506	15
2001	53	151	486	16
2000	66	146	458	19
1999	76	143	525	27
1998	106	160	528	53
1997	124	171	516	69
1996	149	186	487	94
1995	172	193	496	97
1994	218	233	516	103
1993	245	288	488	123
1992	245	310	500	127
1991	260	264	455	134

While it appears that Faith and Grace are still going strong, Hope is fluctuating, and we never really had much Charity...

	Peter	James	John	And rew	Philip	Bartho lomew	Tho mas	Matt hew	Simon	Judas
2005	161	17	18	6	325	***	40	4	254	***
2004	142	17	18	6	307	***	37	4	254	***
2003	146	18	17	5	289	***	36	4	235	***
2002	134	18	17	6	263	***	36	4	242	***
2001	133	19	14	7	268	***	33	3	259	***
2000	125	18	14	7	255	***	33	3	263	***
1999	105	19	15	7	240	***	31	3	267	***
1998	111	18	15	9	214	***	31	3	301	***
1997	102	17	15	8	195	***	31	3	334	***
1996	96	17	15	10	185	***	28	2	342	***
1995	89	17	13	11	180	***	27	2	373	***
1994	87	14	15	10	168	***	27	3	356	***
1993	82	14	16	10	147	***	27	3	358	***
1992	81	9	14	5	138	***	27	3	348	***
1991	77	7	10	5	120	***	28	3	371	***

I would really be worried about things if Judas was on the list, Judas the brother of James withstanding...

	Boyd	Tom	Russ ell	Dal lin	Jos eph	Rich ard	Rob ert	Jeff rey	Hen ry	Dieter	David
2005	***	***	394	959	10	93	39	171	103	***	14
2004	***	***	365	915	9	92	36	149	109	***	14
2003	***	***	346	790	7	86	35	140	116	***	14
2002	***	***	328	738	7	77	34	132	115	***	13
2001	***	***	307	755	8	73	30	119	123	***	12
2000	***	***	320	743	8	65	29	104	126	***	16
1999	***	***	325	726	8	61	26	100	130	***	16
1998	***	***	300	744	11	55	23	91	136	***	13
1997	***	***	258	792	12	61	23	84	139	***	14
1996	***	996	260	779	12	45	23	72	139	***	13
1995	***	961	239	852	12	42	22	64	136	***	16
1994	***	***	233	850	11	41	21	55	146	***	13
1993	***	886	201	825	12	40	17	53	136	***	11
1992	***	861	185	***	11	40	17	51	141	***	10
1991	***	733	174	***	9	34	13	45	145	***	8

And the current 12 (with 2 Russells). See, I'd really like to know when Richard and Jeffrey will drop off the list...

I didn't want to find out about names like Bubba, Moe, Curly, Shemp, Billy Bob, or anything like that. It would really be depressing to have one of those in the top 100. Same of Harpo, Zippy, and Dilbert. (Or worse, Dogbert.) If you really have the itch, go see for yourself.