Whipped!

Whew! I'm whipped (whupped if you're from the south like me :) and it ass because of all the stuff I have to complete before I go on vacation. Basically, tomorrow is the last day I work until Jan 3. :) Happy!

I'm finally taking a vacation! The queen and I are taking to two princesses to Disney Land in Southern California, though the 2 princesses do not know this yet. It's their big Christmas gift from our royal selves. Anyway, if you know us and see the princesses, please keep the secret! :) We have all the arrangements handled and are renting a royal carriage to transport us all overland through the glittering city of Las Vegas (I've never been there by the way) and on to Southern California. There, we'll visit with the royal Mouse and all his associates for the better part of a week. We'll also visit a couple of friends from our previous lives in VA while we're there. We might also visit a couple of friends in Las Vegas on the way back, though that's still unplanned. It won't be that much rest and relaxation, but it'll be a vacation from the norm.

I just hope the princesses appreciate the effort the queen and I had to go through to accomplish this task. I need to go and help one of the princesses retrieve a game from her closet. Talk to you all later! :)

This post was brought to you by the letters M, I, C, K, E, Y, and the number 5.

Ho, Ho, Oh, No!

We delivered Christmas cookies this evening. Those of you who know me know that if I deliver something, I like to deliver it and be on my way. Those of you who know the queen, know that she can't possibly deliver something without a lot of jabewasa. She asked me to go and I knew that I should have said no, but I said yes in the hopes that we'd deliver seven packages and then come home within the hour.

Yeah, whatever!

The first stop, she went into the house and I knew it was all going to be downhill from there. When she finally came out, my mood had already turned south for the winter and it didn't help that our princesses were cranky. We then had a few houses go by pretty quickly and then we got bogged down when the princesses wanted to get out of the royal carriage. After finally getting them back in the carriage, we proceeded to go to another neighbor's home and, like light in a black hole, we were all pulled in.

The lady was quite amusing and was from the South, so I felt comfortable talking to her, but it resulted in us remaining out for far too long. We finally got the princesses to bed, an hour late, and I'm sure they'll be cranky tomorrow. Especially since we all got flu shots today.

I guess it's the queen's problem tomorrow. :) Mostly anyway. I'll have to deal with it after work.

The queen's issue with blogger has still not been resolved. They announced that the remaining features had been put into place, but her blog is still F.U.B.A.R.! I guess it's just S.N.A.F.U. over at Google's HQ. I can't believe they put something like this in place without a way to back out of it if the process failed in mid-stream.

Anyway, I'm gonna either WoW or play Texas Hold 'em now. Later!

This post was brought to you by the letters B, L, A, H, B, L, A, H, B, L, A, H, and the number 85.

Continuing Saga...

The Queen's Blog is now in Limbo. Google and Blogger seem to have really mucked up the process and now she has no control of her own blog. It sucks because she's taking it pretty hard. If you're wondering why she hasn't posted anything yet, that would be why.

This post was brought to you by the letters S, U, C, K, S and the number 6.

Beta...

They updated Blogger / Blogspot and are in the process of converting to Blogger Beta. It seems fine to me, but is it possible to make the conversion process any more painful? You practically have the Queen in tears!

Anyway, I hope this new one is worth all the trouble. So far so good (aside from a little problem converting, but it's been resolved).

Nothing much happening here these days, but we'll see what happens as the month progresses. :)

That's all for now! This post was brought to you by the letters B, E, T, A, and the number 1.

Quiet Time...

I'm forced to do less talking than I normally do. I have an ailment (I think it's a sinus infection) and it's causing drainage and a sore throat. That leads to coughing and inflamed vocal cords, which results in less than optimal conditions for oral communication. I sound very bad, though better today than I did on Friday night, Saturday, or Sunday. At any rate, I need to reduce the amount of talking I do in order to make the cords feel better so I can talk. It's quite annoying. :)

I'm sure the Queen isn't very happy about it as she complains that I'm not vocal enough as it is. I guess this'll show her that it could be worse. :)

Anyway, not much happened over the past week aside from helping the Admiral rebuild her computer last night. Please let us all know if it's working correctly, Bob! :)

I'm not gonna say that much more. Instead, I'm gonna go and take a short nap or play Uno w/ the queen and the big princess. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters, Q, U, I, E, T, and the number 8.

Alumni!

You can now officially call me an alumni of James Madison University! My diploma arrived in the mail this weekend. :) Now, all I have to do is spend a bunch of money to get it properly framed and display it to the world! I'm somewhat stoked!

Anyway, I ate too much Turkey on Thursday, put up the lights on 2 houses this weekend, and I've managed to acquire what feels like a sinus infection over night. What's up with me, eh? I guess it's a good thing I have to work tomorrow. I'll be forced to take it easy. :)

Not much else, I just wanted to let the world know that I have another title, now: College Graduate!

This post was brought to you by the letters J, M, U, and the number 17.

Feasting!

I made 2 sweet potato pies last night and I'm preparing a 20lb. turkey today. I've decided to skip breakfast to be sure that there is room for Turkeyday food in my belly when the time comes to eat it. :) The queen prepared 2 cherry, cream cheese pies for this feast and in about 2 hours, everything will be piled into the car and we'll all trek to the queen mother's house to feast upon the goodness. I'm looking forward to the food and enjoying the company of the queen's family. At least as much of it as I can stand, that is. At least I can eat turkey!

I'm a little light on sleep this morning because I had to get up early and prepare the big bird. I tried to go back to bed, but the little princesses don't understand the word "quiet". I also had to contend with the queen's inability to breathe and all the subsequent noise that her attempts created. The net result is that I'm a bit bleary-eyed at the moment. I'm sure the tryptophan induced coma will kick in some time in the middle of the afternoon and I'll do my best to fight it off. I need to be able to partake of the pies!!!

This post was brought to you by the letters P, I, E, and the number 6.

Yay!

The heat at work works properly! YAY!!! This makes me happy. It took them entirely too long to get it working correctly. Anyway, I'm no longer being baked when I go to work. :)

So Queen Karana asked me to prepare a list of what I want for Christmas and I figured you would get a kick out the shortness of the list, so here it is:

1) Palmone Treo 700p smartphone. My cell phone is getting pretty old and it time to replace it with a better option.

2) A gaming computer. I have the parts picked out, but it's a matter of getting permission from the Queen to dip into the royal treasury.

3) 2GB USB Thumb drive. Everyone wants to carry stuff around with them, don't they?

4) Various and sundry DVD Movies in wide-screen format.

5) Various and sundry books from the multitude of series I read these days.

I'm not going to list off all the movies or all the books because that would take entirely too long. :) Anyway, it's all done and you can amuse yourselves. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters, S, N, O, W, and the number 31.

Still Busted!

The heat at work is still busted even though they came yesterday afternoon and "fixed" it. It was 80+ degrees for nearly the entire day and for several hours, it was 85 degrees. If you know me, then you know that I overheat pretty easily. I'm suffering the lingering effects of overheating now in that I have a headache and feel wiped out! I sometimes get a queasy stomach and it definitely happened this time. Think Flu-like symptoms. I'll be OK once I've had a few hours to cool off.

Anyway, I have to go cook now, so I'll talk to you all later.

This post was brought to you by the letters P, O, R, K, C, H, O, P, S, and the number 4.

Sniveling...

The Pink Princess is sniveling. I HATE sniveling. She wants to play the piano and that requires practice, but she hates to practice. The result is that she snivels and whines throughout the practice session, and consequently isn't trying very hard to get better. I'm conflicted about it. On one hand, I want to allow her to suck when she plays in front of people so she understands that it requires practice to get better at it. On the other hand, I have no desire to humiliate her. She has a recital on Saturday and she needs a great deal of work. I hope she pulls it together before then, but I'm not holding out much hope for it. Perhaps, I'm being too much of a pessimist.

Any Ideas? Anyone?


They finally fixed the heat in our office today. They started last week but couldn't finish because there was a part that was missing. The net result was that the office temp was 80+ on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and most of today. This was definitely NOT pleasant! At least the part is now installed and the heating systems seems to be working more correctly. We'll see what happens tomorrow, eh? :) I'd prefer it to be about 68 in the office, but that's me. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters S, J, F, G, and the number 6.

Again...

It looks like the Queen is getting sick again. She's got her hacking cough and she's taken to sleeping while sitting up. That's somewhat depressing.

My promotion has been made permanent and a raise in pay has been granted. Things are going well with me on that front.

I haven't played much WoW in the last 2-3 weeks, but that's because I was in the throes of two book series. I've been reading the Belgariad series (5 books) and the Malloreon series (5 books), both by David and Leigh Eddings. The second one takes place just after the first one with the same characters. Please forgive me if I've been scarce lately. :)

I can start to catch up on WoW and blogging now that I just finished the books.

I'll go now and figure out what my next post will be about.

This post was brought to you by the letters N, C, L, and the number 4.

Ready to go... Mostly

My mother-In-Law had the misfortune to have a hard drive failure 2 weeks ago (it was due to a fan failure and overheating). She consulted me and we ordered her a new hard drive and fan. Once they arrived, I spend a couple of days re-installing Microsuck Windows 2000 and updating it as well as drivers, etc. (it wouldn't have taken 2 whole days, but I do have other things I have to take care of.) After that, the old drive with all her data on it was so damaged/mangled that it took me a solid week of do this and do that to make the drive readable! As it turns out, it appears that all her data was still intact, so I transferred it to her new drive. All that's left is to install her printer software, digital camera software, and integrate her machine into the local network at her house. All that should take about 20 minutes or so, but they're out of town!. I'll probably go do this later on today at which point the project will be complete. Hopefully, her current machine will last her another 2+ years (depending on how many other components were damaged by the heat) before she gets a new machine. She'll have completely bypassed Window XP if that happens. Funny, eh? :)

Anyway, I just thought I'd give a plug to the software titled HDD Regenerator. It's good stuff!

That's all for now. This post was brought to you by the letters S, J, T, and the number 6.

Organized Religion and stuff...

Rant Warning! If you don't want to read this post, I'll understand. If you do and are offended, please know that you were warned!

I've decided to let it be known that I hate organized religion. I can't see any reason for it. The vast majority of organized religions I've seen seem to place more emphasis on what other people see you doing rather than what you actually are doing. Example. People make a big deal of getting into their "Sunday Best" in order to let anyone who happens to see them that they've been to or are on their way to an organized religious meeting. Of course some of them claim that it's to show respect to whatever religion they happen to follow. I concede a small claim to that, but I also claim that the same can be done by not wearing the worst things you have. Besides, isn't it claimed in the majority of organized religions that God (in whatever form you choose) can see you all the time anyway? I think it's more likely that this behavior is so that others can see you observing your religious gathering.

Then there's the idea of the religious gathering itself. It appears that people are going to worship together, when in most cases, it's so that one person can tell you his/her interpretation of a particular piece of text and expect you to accept and believe their interpretation blindly. What good is the free will that God gave us if we don't interpret the texts for OURSELVES and come up with our own conclusions? It seems more likely that those organized religions want to dictate how people act. To that end, they denounce this thing and that action publicly.

Speaking of which, this country was founded on the premise that there was a separation of church and state. If that's the case, then why do so many religions feel the need to destroy that distinction? Why can't they see that their actions are moving this country towards a place where our founders eschewed? Ever heard of "Freedom of Religion?"

Religion should be a personal thing between you and the pantheon you believe in. It doesn't require anyone else to participate. It doesn't require any place else either. I'm a religious person, but I don't think it's necessary to blatantly shove my religion in anyone's face. I also feel that there's a place for religion in everyone's life (whatever you believe), but I believe it a personal thing and should be kelp between you and your pantheon only.

This post was brought to you by the letters F, E, D, U, P, and the number 9.

Lost.

I like the TV show "Lost". Unfortunately, I'm not up to speed with it so I have intentionally not watched any of Season 3. "If you like it so much, why intentionally miss it?" you might ask. You'd have a really good, pointed question if you were to ask it. My answer is this: We missed about half or so of the second season during the occupation of my mother-in-law's basement as she doesn't have cable and her over the air reception of that particular channel was pretty much non-existent. We have DirecTV now, but I'm so far behind, I may never catch up.

On the bright side, I know someone who has Season 1 on DVD and a colleague at work allowed me to borrow Season 2. We'll be able to catch up now. :)

I'm not going to say much about work other than it's sometimes a giant pain to try to work well with others. Especially when the others all couldn't care less about any department other than their own. It doesn't seem to matter to them that they wouldn't be able to do a thing without my department. I'm the head of the IT department. :) I'm sure that they'll get over the silliness at some point, so I'll continue to have as much patience as possible and hope they start thinking sooner rather than later.

I've begun reading again. I go in cycles. I've recently begun a cycle of heavy reading. In the past 2 weeks, I've read 4 fairly large books and have started a 5th. I haven't played as much WoW as before, but I plan to try to balance the 2 a bit. :) I also haven't been able to do any gaming at all as my game masters have been canceling on me. Usually at the last minute. I'm not bitter or angry, but I need my fix. Perhaps, I'll just drop them and get involved in another gaming group. Post a comment if you're interested in what I play, or starting a group. :)

Anyway, consider yourselves updated! :)

This post was brought to you by the letters D, L, E, and the number 1.

Military

I saw this posting on CNN today that was a link to a letter written by a Marine in Iraq. I thought it said a lot without saying anything classified. It really made me think a bit about people. I hope you'll all read it and take a moment for whatever. The link is to the printable version of the letter.

This post was brought to you by the letters U, S, M, C, and the number 1.

Random Headache

I woke up with a pretty bad headache this morning. That's not a good way to start a day. This was significant because We have Managers' Meetings on Tuesdays. I hate to go into one of those with a headache. It sucks!

Speaking of Managers' Meetings, ours was actually productive today. We decided on a few items and got a clear indicator as to what next steps to do on other items. Of course, the Marketing department wasn't represented in this meeting and so it wasn't pre-empted and turned into a Marketing Meeting. :)

Speaking of Marketing, if any of you readers, like cartoons, like technology, and dislike marketing, you'll probably like the online cartoon by the name of User Friendly. :)

Not much else to say today other than it feels like the season is in transition (which it is), but I don't feel like it's quite Fall. We're sort of in limbo around here.

Anyway, that's all for today. This post was brought to you by the letters D, Y, K, and the number 5.

A little different.

Today, I played host to my daughters, Sara and Becca. They spent about 3 hours in my office at my workplace watching movie on our portable DVD player. I think that enjoyed the time with Daddy, though I didn't really spend a lot of time interacting with them. I think they thought it was neat to be with Daddy for so long during the day. I do have to get work done while I'm at work you know. :) I told my supervisor, the president of the company, and he was cool with it. He told me that there were marks on his table where his kids had marked it up with permanent marker when he had to babysit at work too. I thought that made him a little more approachable.

Moving on. My WoW character is just about to gain level 38 and I feel I'm just about ready to solo a few things that have given me problems in the past. I'm also a little torn about my guild since it doesn't appear particularly interested in offering any assistance, though that's what guildies are supposed to do for other guildies. Oh well. I'll live. :)

OK. I've said enough for this one. Karen already told you about the Circus yesterday, and besides saying that the kidletts greatly enjoyed it (so did Karen and me, but don't tell anyone), there's nothing to say. I was a bit disappointed that there were no lions, tigers, or bears, but I guess they've been deemed inappropriate for circuses, though it may have happened a long time ago. Heh! It's been a VERY long time since I've gone to a big circus, and I don't really remember much of it. Est Vita! :)

This post was brought to you by the letters, R, I, S, G, and the number 7.

Where does it all go?

OK. Who can tell me where the time leaks off to? I just sat down ready to post since I figured it had been a couple of days since my last one and realized that it had been SEVEN days since the last post. Holy CRAP! Where did all the time leak out? Where did seven whole days go? I can't fathom it for the life of me. I was pretty sure that I'd posted only a few days ago. Oh well, I'll get over it. Hopefully you will too. :)

I made banana pudding a couple of times recently. Once for the family, Karen, Sara, and Becca, and once for a company baby shower at work. (Sorry, I'm not gonna give that link out yet. :) Anyway, I know that my family likes my cooking, though I really don't think this counts as cooking, but apparently I'm a pretty big hit at work as well. Basically, the people at work made gluttons of themselves and tore into the thing as if it was gold. I was luck to get the container back in one piece! Perhaps I should make desserts for the family more often. :) I'm sure the females of the house would enjoy that. I'm sure Karen will have a comment about this.

My WoW character has finally reached level 37. Only 3 more until I can purchase a mount and wear ail armor! :) Yay! Of course, most of my guild doesn't appear interested in helping me much any more. What's up with that? I assist anyone else in the guild I can, unless I'm slowing them down. Too bad it doesn't work both ways.

OK. That's it! This post was brought to you by the letters S, J, F, G, and the number 7.

Time for a rest!

The big event is finally behind us! Rebecca's birthday party was today and I know I'm glad it's over. Don't get me wrong, I love to see kids having fun, but as you all probably know by now, Karen doesn't just have cake, ice cream, presents, and singing. Oh No! There's the custom CD that goes with the theme, there's the loads of games that require props to be built (Sara's princess party comes to mind), there's the months of planning and stressing over the event (on Karen's part, not mine), and finally there's the lack of sleep and tight deadlines as Kare- er, WE procrastinate until the last minute and get no sleep the night before and work ourselves crazy the day of the event. It just feels really good once the thing's over. :)

Now, before my poor wife blows a gasket, I will freely admit that this was NOT the prime example of going overboard. In fact this one was quite tame. There was only one prop that really needed to be made and there wasn't really much to do to make it. There was a bunch of clean up to do before hand (needed to be done anyway) and some plans needed to be changed at the last minute (weather related), so it wasn't that bad. The feeling after it's over is the same though. :) You should ask her to post some pics of the last 10 birthday parties we've thrown for our kids. :)

Anyway, I'm tired and this post was brought to you by the letters, O, V, E, R, and the number 4.

Tinker Toy - Done!

The swing has been purchased, transported, assembled, placed! The backyard playground is pretty much complete! Next spring we can add the fort and slide over the sand box. ( if we decide to go that route :) Now all that's left is to allow the girls to see it and lose their minds. :)

Now that all that is complete, it's time to grow the wallet again as it was squeezed a bit tight! The next thing to purchase will be Karen's birthday present. :) Before you start thinking I'm letting a big secret out, she's well aware of what I intend to get her for her birthday. The biggest reason for it is that we were going to get it for her earlier, but she decided it would be better to wait until her birthday to do it. I don't really have an issue with that because I know what I want to get for Christmas! LOL!

Anyway, I'm not sounding too well these days as I have some sort of head cold or sinus thing that has made my voice kinda shady. It's no big deal, but I sound pretty odd. :) That being said, I think I'll shut up now and allow you all to enjoy my entry as It doesn't happen too often these days. HA!

This post was brought to you by the letters, R, O, Y, G, B, I, V, and the number 7.

Construction Complete!

It's done! It's now full of sand. It has a lid. We have sand left over. It only took 21 wheelbarrow loads of sand to be carted around my house and dumped into the sand box for it to fill up to the rim. "To the rim?!" you say. Well, the stuff tends to settle a bit so I figured that it will drop a couple of inches due to settling and that will be enough to keep it all in. :)

I should go shower now because I'm drenched in sweat! It was a bit warm and humid out so I lost a couple of pounds of water during the workout. :) No worries, I drank plenty of water to replace what I lost.

(abrupt subject change)

Bob, your cables should arrive tomorrow via USPS. :) Instructions are in the package!

(another abrupt subject change)

Karen, I'm sorry. I'm a jerk. :( In my defense, I'm not all to blame. Please forgive.

(yet another, abrupt subject change)

All, I have a level 34 Hunter in WoW! :) The fall season starts soon! :) We don't have a DVR. :(

OK, I'm done. This post was brought to you by the letters N, S, O, G and the number 62.

Let the Construction Begin! :)

I have purchased what I need to put together a nice, large, deep sand box for the girls. The dimensions are going to be 6 ft. x 6 ft. x 2 ft. (LxWxD) though we'll see about the 2 ft , dimension. This also means that I'll need 72 cubic feet of sand to put in it on top of 6 cubic feet of pea gravel. This also means that I'll be relocating 72 cubic feet of packed soil out of my yard. I have a couple of low spots in the yard so I can fill those in, but that will not account for it all. I need to find a neighbor who needs some soil. :)

I have a feeling that I'll need this long weekend in order to complete this project and recover. At least I'll have a nice break in the middle when I go down to Provo to assist Bob in the assembly of her beast! :)

Anyway, that's all the excitement from me. This post was brought to you by the letters R, S, T, L, N, E, and the number 8.

Stupid Trash Man!

What's with the trash guys? The idiot emptied our trash, but didn't empty it! It's not like he has to get out of his truck to pick it up by hand, the thing has this handy claw on the side and that does all the work. I went to put the thing back in it's little hiding place on the side of the house and found that it was still half full!

I'm interested now to see what happens this week. :)

So, Dubby finds it amusing that I've actually used the word alacrity. I'm not sure what to make of that. Believe it or not, folks, but I have a pretty large vocabulary. It comes from all the reading. Speaking of which, I haven't done as much of that recently as I'd like, so I think I'll start reading another book. Probably the next one in the "Stone of Truth" series by Terry Goodkind. Any of you who like fantasy, will enjoy this series. There's also a love story buried in all the coolness, so it'll appeal to lots. :)

Hmmm... Perhaps I should start reviewing some of the books I have to see if I can get some of you to read some of them. This is something I should consider... I could have a posting for AT LEAST every day of the year. It's worth considering... Would you all like to see something like that? Let me know either way. :)

I'm outtie! This post was brought to you by the letters U, D, Q, and the number 4.

Ugh!!!

Well, It's been more than a week since my last post, so I changed the title of my blog a bit to reflect the alacrity with which I post to the thing. My apologies to all if you've worried that I've passed away, etc. :) That is NOT the case, though it may seem so.

Anyway, I just walked over to the Delta Center, here in Salt Lake City to get free tix to the Circus. We were successful in acquiring the tix, but it's pretty warm outside today. The Delta Center is only a few blocks away, but the sun was beating down on me and I had no shade. I also made the mistake of wearing a dark shirt today. Needless to say, it was pretty "Ugh!" out there today.

I want to send a shout out to all the folks that read my blog regularly, though I don't think that number is all that large. I want to say "Thank You" but that would be too easy, so instead I'll sing a song for you. (insert song of your choice, by the artist of your choice here) There! *bows* I hope you all liked it!

For those of you interested, my WoW character is on the Ysera server and is a member of the Kuhcaw guild. Her name is Amyrylyndyl (yes I'm playing a female character) and she'’s an elf Hunter (Thanks, Thrynn, for the name of her cat :). She has finally made it to level 31 and is (by comments from other members of my guild) cruising! I haven't created any Alts yet as that would mean I have caught up to the rest of my guild (in the 40s) and have time to work on another character. Perhaps any Alt I create will be on another server. We'll see. :)

Time to go! This posting was brought to you by the letters H, O, T, and the number 31.

A.C. ... and Thanks!

I LOVE AIR CONDITIONING! I'm talking about the REAL stuff, not the fake Utah, feeble excuse for AC they seem to love out here. It was installed on Thursday and the house has been at a nice comfy 73 degrees since. :)

Thanks to Cathryn for naming Cat. Keturah is her new name and I've had some comps on it already. You have my thanks! :)

I'm sorry I haven't posted anything for a while, but I've either been busy working, doing odds and ends around the house, caring for everyone, or gaming (WoW and Sidewinder - mostly WoW though). I'm trying to catch up to my friends so I can go on raids with them. I have 11 more levels to go until I'm close enough. Once I catch up, I won't play quite as much, because I won't be playing catch-up... Do you buy that? :)

Karen is still pretty sick. She does lots of hacking and attempts to remove her lungs (by coughing them out) and a good deal of moaning in pain afterwards. I figure she'll get better at some point and move back into the bedroom, but I'm not sure when...

Anyway, I'm going to keep this post short-ish and tell you that it was brought to you by the letters W, S, G, and the number 29.

Quick!

This post will be short and quick since a storm's on its way and I don't know how long 'til it gets here.

Cathryn, did you get the attempt from today to send the newegg wish list? How does it look to you? Is that in your price range? Comments? :)

Dubby, I'd be happy to assist you with your computer questions. I just sent something that I hope will help you. :)

Karen, get better quickly so you can move back into our room. :)

Everyone, please give me some suggestions for Cat's new name. :)


This post was brought to you be the letters F, A, S, T, and the number 7.

Hello?!?

Hello? Is there anyone there? Have I fallen from favor with my readers? It's either that or my last post wasn't worth commenting on.

This post was brought to you by the letters B, Y, E, and the number 0.

Too Long... Sorry.

I just realized, that I haven't posted in more than a week. Too many things have happened in that time frame. It's been too long... Sorry. I have good reasons though.

My last post indicated that the IT department had just been cut in half. Well we just lost another third. My direct supervisor, (head of the IT department) announced last week on Wednesday, that Monday, July 31 would be his last day here. That's tomorrow, folks.

I've been selected to run the IT department (all 2 of us), so this is a bit of a promotion. I'm happy I still have a job, but it doesn't make me happy to see the direction the company is going. I'd feel much better if we hired 2 more people into the IT department and began training them into backups of the 2 remaining full time members of the department. The company would collapse inside of 2 weeks if anything were to happen to either of us and that scares me immensely! It doesn't look like the owner cares about the IT department at all, however and in fact sees IT as nothing but an expense.

I need to do what's best for my family and to that end, I'm making sure that no opportunities pass me by. That being said, I'm NOT going to quit until and unless I find something better at a bigger, more stable company. Anyone know someone who needs a good Sr. Sys Admin? :)

Anyway, in WoW, my character has graduated to level 25 and is doing pretty well. I'm told that I'm moving along at a pretty good clip. That would make me feel better if I could actually catch up to some of the other people I play with. I think I'd do better if I hadn't chosen some of the things I chose with the character earlier on. Oh Well! That's life I suppose. Anyway, I'm taking suggestions for the name of my pet cat (in the game). It's basically a large black panther that advances along with me. The game names it "Cat" be default, but I can select a name myself. Of course, once I select a name, it's final. So... Anyone have any suggestions? :)

We're getting REAL air conditioning! It'll be installed on August 10 and the Swamp cooler will be ripped outta the house! Silly Utah folks stilol believe swamp coolers are useful. That means I'll have to relocate a few things out in the yard and I'm NOT looking forward to all the digging it will require. Such is life, eh? :)

This post brought to you by the letters A, C, and the number 10.

Mixed Feelings

I now have mixed feelings about my company. About 3 weeks ago, the controller of the company left abruptly. I had thought I was becoming pretty good friends with this guy, but then he left under less than favorable circumstances. Apparently, there had been some financial details that were slipping past him or he was missing or something and it turns out that the company wasn't doing as well as we all believed. Suffice it to say that once the real data came out, it was clear that we owed the Feds some money and we weren't doing as well as we had believed. As a result of this, some rather unpleasant events occurred.

The lay offs began in the IT department first. Half of the staff of 6 was let go in the span of an hour. The lucky ones with a job after the smoke settled were my boss (a developer), a developer (and scripter), and the sys admin (me). I'm lucky in that my boss, the guy who had to implement the lay offs, went to bat for me and made it clear to the owner that without me, the computer infrastructure of the company would collapse in pretty short order. He tried to save another of the unfortunates, but could only get so far with the owner.

The IT department wasn't the only department affected. Another department has to cut its hours in half, 2 other departments are losing 1 member each with the possibility of one department losing 2 members. Have I mentioned that I work for a rather small company and that losing that many people is pretty significant? As far as I can tell, that's approximately 20% of our workforce in one fell swoop. I hope we can pull out of the dive it feels like we're in.

On the positive side, I still have a job, I've been told by the president of the company that I'm critical for the company's continued health, and I got the backups to work correctly finally. This week has definitely been filled with mixed feelings when it comes to the place I work.

I'll live and I'll get through it. I'll also update my resume just in case. I'm so jaded...

This post was brought to you by the letters P, I, N, K, S, L, I, P, and the number 3. Please excuse the duplicate letters, they requested to be allowed to do so.

Stupid.

What is wrong with people? Why can't people live up to their end of agreements? The previous owner of the house we're living in has still not completed his end of a legal, binding contract. He was supposed to arrange the installation of an AC unit, a gutter, and get a furnace inspection by the end of June. It is now the 17th of July and none of this has happened. I've attempted to contact him with little productive response. I suppose I'll have to sue him. I don't want to do that, but I might not have a choice. The temps have been near 100 degrees recently and the "swamp cooler" that Utah residents are so fond of just can't "cut the mustard" as it were. It's been mid- to upper-80s inside the house with the cooler on full bore. I keep just handing the girls glasses of ice water to try to keep them hydrated.

Why do people have to be so stupid? Why couldn't he just do what he said he would? I suppose I was the stupid one for believing the guy would actually live up to his word. Now, Karen, Sara, and Rebecca have to suffer for it with me. Such is life I guess.

This rant was brought to you by the letters U, G, H, and the number 100.

H-O-T!!!

It was 103 on the Fahrenheit thermometer at one point today. That's too hot for my tastes. So far I'm not a big fan of the Salt Lake Valley in Utah, but I haven't really given it much chance, though days like this one don't help it too much. Anyone else want to weigh in on this one? What do you think of the Salt Lake Valley. I'm not a fan, I'd rather be in Virginia or Ohio, or anywhere that is lush. Yes I know that means humidity, but I grew up with Humidity and a good AC unit can work wonders when it comes to humidity.

Too bad people around here don't believe in AC, instead they use "Swamp Coolers" which work by sucking air through water soaked filters that cool the air (and humidify it in the process) that is then blown into the house. The biggest drawback is that once the ambient humidity hits a certain level (I'm not sure what that level is, FYI), the system is no longer effective in cooling the air. Basically, when you really need to be cooled off, a "Swamp Cooler" can't do the job. I can't stand to be hot, when I get overheated, I have pretty bad problems. It's almost like I'm having a continual case of heat stroke/exhaustion when I get hot.

We're supposed to have AC in our house. The former owners agreed to install it in order to get us to buy it. Unfortunately, we haven't heard anything about when that will happen. It was supposed to happen by the end of last month, but it hasn't happened yet. If it doesn't happen by the end of this month, he'll owe us $100, but I'd rather have the AC unit than the money.

We'll see what happens. I'm going to go attempt to cool off a bit.

This post was brought to you by the letters W, O, W (yeah, I know it repeats), and the number 19.

One more day.

I've decided that the weekends need one more day. And every weekend needs to be mother-in-law free. Basically, part of each day of my weekend was burned because of my mother-in-law. This leads to the feeling that one's weekend was wasted. I won't get into details because it's not necessary, but I want to be completely done with her for a while. She is such a drain on my time and emotions, that I feel older than I am when I have to exchange more than a few sentences with her. Nevertheless, The weekend could use another day.

On to brighter things... My Night Elven Hunter is now 17th level! Pretty soon she'll be able to find better armor and weapons. If you don't know WoW, just ignore the previous sentence as well as this one. I'm trying to find some good coupons from Dell so I can buy Karen a good laptop. I keep finding some pretty good deals, but the coupon codes have a limited number of uses (in this case 4000) and then they expire. It SUCKS! Basically, once the general public finds out about it, the ebayers have already used the coupons up. I don't blame them, but Dell needs to do away with the limited uses and they'd have quite a few more sales. I'd have made a purchase by now if that were the case. :)

Anyway, it's time for me to go enjoy WoW now, so I'll post again later! :)

Tonight's post was brought to you by the letters A, F, K, and the number 17.

Explain, Please.

I'm sure there are a number of you who read my blog (even if that number is 0 :) and wonder why I pick the letters I do when I do. Usually, I pick letters that are significant to the blog entry, but occasionally, I'll just pick random letters. Sometimes you just have to know me in order to pick up on it. :) Once you find that you're picking up on the significance, you should call and arrange an appointment to your local head shrink as you'll have no doubt delved too deeply into the enigma that is me. HAHA!

Anyhoo... That's my $.02 worth. Please feel free to salt and pepper to taste so that you can swallow the explanation.

Today's post was brought to you by the letters P, I, K, and the number 4. (Put the letters of these last 2 postings together in order and you get my nickname. :)

WoW Addict!

I'm now a WoW addict. I made the joyous mistake of purchasing the game. It's a boatload of fun, folks!

It other news, I haven't been posting as much the past week and I'm sorry to you all for that. I'll endeavor to perform better in the future.

This posting will be brief as I have a killer headache and will probably go take a nap under a fan to try to make it go away.

This post was brought to you by the letters I, S, E, and the number 11. Words are Bob's deal. :)

Low Point, Please?!

WARNING! Slightly depressing post follows! WARNING!

I'm not sure if a week can be much worse? An unimaginable number of things went wrong this week that has taken a pretty serious toll on my mood. Everything from lost files (with a broken backup so we couldn't restore it) to unplugging the production SQL Server in the middle of the afternoon, to disassembling a DAT tape autoloader to remove a bad tape from the embedded DAT drive. The week is only about half over, and I dread what tomorrow and Friday bring... I just hope I've reached the low point... Please!

The only bright thing is that we were able to convince the boss to allow us to spend a little money to purchase a piece of software that will safeguard the company's data. We've been working on the upper management on this for quite some time now.

Tonight's post was brought to you by the letters U, G, H, and the phrase "wrung out". The numbers get the night off.

The New Member of the Family...

Please join me in welcoming Tree to the Harris family. I'm sure Karen will eventually tell you all about it. Yes, we did indeed acquire a Red Sunset Maple and located it in such a way that it should shade about half of our back yard once it fills out. (in about a decade! :)

Did you think I was announcing something else? HA!!! Anyway, There was a boatload of digging and a pretty serious amount of lifting done this weekend as I also installed an over-the-stove microwave oven on Saturday, the same day as the tree went in, and we had company today. There was a good bit of work that went into getting the house presentable for that occasion.

Let's see, what else... Oh! FYI, DO NOT write "wash me" on someone's car unless it's on the window. It actually scratches the finish and doesn't come off once the car is clean. No big worries, though I'm sure that a good waxing will fill in the scratches (surface scratches only) and make the car look really good. Maybe I'll re-clean Lizzzie (yes, 3 'Z's) some time this week and give her a good waxing. Then, the following week, I'll give a good cleaning and waxing to Karden. We'll see.

I'm tired and I really need to just go to bed early so I can at least partly recover from the weekend. I'm sure I'll be able to recover from the days off by going to work, right? :)

Anyway, I'm heading to bed. Tonight's silliness was brought to you by the word increment, the letters R, S, M, and the number 5.

Clean!

I washed the cars today. Both of them. You might think this isn't anything particularly noteworthy, but my wife and I know that it is quite significant. This is the first washing of this sort the cars have seen in very nearly a year. I know that's a sad, sad thing, but we've been living at Karen's parents' house and it just didn't seem like the thing to do. There were too many other more important things to do, but now that we have our own house and our own bills, I feel I can take the time (and water) to clean them sufficiently. As an added bonus, I'll be able to see out the side windows again. Yay!!! :)

On another note, we're getting little things around the house done bit by bit. I think we've both gotten it into our heads that it doesn't need to all be done immediately (just in a big hurry :), but we are allowed to take our time. Of course, it's not like anyone will be telling us what we can do and when we can do it (with the possible exception of Karen), so there's no real rush. We'll have our house-warming when we have it.

We're resisting the urge to go out and buy stuff for our new house, though I do go out and get things that I know we'll need, but only so often and a few things at a time, but there's this couch that I know Karen loves and to be honest, I like it too. :) It has a love seat that comes with it too, and we'll have to see what develops as to whether or not the set makes its way into our house.

OK. I've filled you in on a few things - I see no need to overwhelm you with a novelette in a single posting, so I'll end this one for now. Speaking of which, what kinds of things do my readers read? I'm interested to know if my audience is a bunch illiterate Tooks (Merri and Pippin), or brainiatic bookworms. Please post a reply so I can get a good count. Thanks muchly! I appreciate it.

This posting has been brought to you by the word expurgate, the letters X, R, F, and the number 9.

BOO!!!

I was just checking to see if everyone was still reading my blog. It's been so long since I updated this here thing-a-ma-bob that I figured you'd all fallen asleep! :) Heh! I guess it's time for me to stop slacking off when it comes to posting and updating my blog. That being said, I'll say good night for now and wrap my head around what I want to say to everyone.

Tonight's posting was brought to you be the word, existentialism (just for you, Bob) and I'm giving the letters and numbers the night off.

P.S. BOO!!! Are you awake yet?! :)

Update pending...

Please bear with us. We know it's been a while since a good update has been provided, but we're moving! Give us a break! :)

We'll give an update to everyone as soon as everything's been completed.

Stop Waste - What?!

So, as you probably already know, we had another set back last night in that we had a pretty significant water leak come up and give us a smack down. I'm positive Karen has told you all about it, so I won't. Instead, I'll tell you how it was a false alarm and the water is back on at the house. I won't go into details, but the long and the short of it is that after turning the Stop Waste valve off and back on again, the massive leaking from that very valve stopped and it turns out that if the valve isn't 100% on or off it will do that as designed (it's designed to release the pressure in the sprinkler lines once it's turned off, but will release the pressure if it's partly on as well).

Anyway, we've decided it would be better if we concentrated on the upper level and the furniture, then the rest of the house incrementally as time allows (we might have time to do the rec room before moving in and maybe not). I'm fairly certain that the main level will have to wait until next week some time. Perhaps longer, depending on the other projects that need to be addressed.

Anyway, that's the update so far. From my point of view at least. :)

Special thanks to the letters, R, S, T, L, N, E and the number 8.

OUCH!!!

Can anyone out there tell me why my lower back would hurt when I spent a lot of time painting ceilings?! SHEEESH! Anyway, I'm way behind on my hoped schedule. Hopefully I can get back on track (read that as not loose any more time) and be able to use some of the down time I have built into my schedule to finish on schedule.

---Beginning of Product Critique---
By the way, the Wagner Power Roller is NOT the tool to use when painting ceilings. It weighs about 3-4 times as much as a conventional roller and isn't as long as a conventional roller with a short extension. I haven't tried it on walls yet (it may be the perfect thing for walls), but I will when I start to paint the many walls of Baked Scone :) The roller itself provided good coverage when I had the energy to hold it to the ceiling for more than a moment. The edging tool that comes with the Power Roller is useless though. I get much better results with a conventional brush. The cleanup time is abysmal as well. It takes 45 minutes plus to perform the cleanup tasks they recommend which is much longer than you want to use the thing if you try to use it on a ceiling. I'm not sure it was worth the money to get it, but I'll wait until I use it on a bunch of walls before I judge that one.
---End of Product Critique---

So there is one coat on the ceilings of the bedrooms and hallway upstairs. There's the vaulted ceiling in the living room and kitchen/dining room on the main floor to do and the ceiling of the rec room on the lower level to do. I got a chance to look at my work today. I wasn't impressed with my work. Too many missed spots, though the coverage was pretty good. I'll stick with a conventional roller for the remainder of the ceilings in the house to be sure I have a good result.

Tonight's painting plan is that I'll get the second coat on the ceilings of the bedrooms and the first coat (at least) on the shelves of the pantry. I'll do it first and see if it needs a second coat (I hope not). The rest of the evening may see me working on the ceilings of the main and lower levels or furniture. It just depends on what's needed and when we need it.

The washer and dryer pair arrived today. The guys were really quick with the install and testing of the units. I'm happy with the machines and I think Karen will be as well.

The Landscaper is supposed to show up today to complete the sprinkler system repair and then we can get the lawn watered properly so that it will green up.

I'll be happy when the AC is installed as well since it is really hot these days. It's supposed to get up to 97 today! The swamp cooler just doesn't cut it and anyone who says it does is smoking something. You should try to locate their stash and share! :)

OK, enough ranting. I'm glad to be back in the home owners' club even though it is going to be a boatload of work for a while. I look forward to getting it finished enough to live in it and get a little rest before the next big project. Who are we kidding?! There's always a next big project!! I'll rest eventually.

I'll try to give another update tomorrow. For now I think I'll just ache a little. :)

Later!

37 to go...

Hours that is, until we take possession of out new home. (I just HAD to get that out before Karen could. Hee Hee :)

In case you didn't know it, I'm pretty stoked about getting outta my mother-in-law's house and into my own. I'm also happy to be re-entering that elite club of home owners. It feels GOOD!!!

I'm NOT looking forward to all the work and long hours that will be put in over the course of the next week, but I'll manage.

Anyway, I just wanted to get you all know how happy I am.

Tonight's entry was brought to you be the letters H, O, M, E, and the number 37... Hee Hee...

Tick, Tock.

There are less than 13 hours until I begin signing and initialing the pages of what usually looks like a book. It's called home sale closing or something to that effect. The upshot is that you sign on the order of 40 or 50 places and vow to adopt an infant ostrich in order to pay and arm and a leg for 30 years. All of this is in order to procure a house to live in. It's an insane process, but that's the only way to buy a house these days. I wish I had a stamp of my signature so I could save time.

Anyway, we're happy to be getting our house and I'm looking forward to that, but I'm NOT looking forward to the boatloads of work I'm going to have to do in order to prep the house to our satisfaction. I'll have a large jetted soaking tub to relax in for a while anyway. :) That sounds pretty good! Assuming I can manage to get Karen out of it.

That's it for now. Tick, tock - watch the clock!

Tonight's silliness was brought to you be the letters K, F, and the number 3. Thank you, and good night!

Let's look at the bright side... if there is one...

Guess what? Our car was tossed Friday night. For those of you who don't watch cop shows or CSI (great show! :) or anything like that, it means that someone who didn't have any right to be in our car, was in it and went through the stuff in the car. In the process, they found a few things that they decided they should own, like our stereo, my MagLite, Karen's phone charger, and the hands free set for our cell phones. There was little damage to the car (a few scratches to the dashboard) but we feel like a pair of royal idiots since we neglected to lock the car the night before.

On the bright side, we get to pick out a new stereo for the car (nevermind that the old one was only about 10 months old) and there was very little damage otherwise. The other bright side of it was that there was no need for them to break a window or anything.

You live and you learn. They only got away with about $200 worth of stuff and no one was hurt, so it isn't all that bad, other than how we felt when we discovered it.

I'm depressing me now so I'll stop writing. Have a good Memorial Day all!

G'Night.

No doubts.

There are no doubts left. It is official that I DO NOT like Fay at all. Maybe it's because I'm bull-headed, but I think she extremely rude and self-centered. She denies nearly everything and WILL NOT take responsibility for her own actions or words. She wants everyone to change to be the way SHE wants them to be (it ain't happenin') and refuses to accept that she has no business commenting about certain parts of my life.

I'm SO READY to be out of here that I can hardly contain myself. Less than 2 weeks until we take possession, of course there's a pile of painting, but that'll be a welcome change.

Time for sleeping, so G'Night!

Random.

My wife lost her head today. The evidence is on her blog. I think she has a pretty good point, though and I think there might be some piece of legislation that's on our side out there somewhere, but finding it would constitute a lot of work.

I'm becoming a bit more on edge - more curt, crabby, annoyed. I want to be out of Fay's house so badly I can taste it. I'm realizing more and more that I just don't like her. I'm sure the feeling's mutual, but I don't sweat it. I'm letting what she does and says get to me more than it should. I can't stand her holier-than-thou, controlling attitude. I'm sure she has a similar description of me, but I don't care. I just want to be in my own space where I can be the way I want to be, without someone dropping little comments about this and that and butting into my life in ways that they weren't invited.

I'm going to paint our new house. It looks like I'll be painting the vast majority of it. I know what color I'll be painting the ceiling and trim in the common areas, but the wall color hasn't been picked yet. The girls' rooms will be painted, but once again, it's unknown what the colors will be. Also, will I be painting the ceiling the same color as the walls? Or will I be painting them the same color as the ceiling in the rest of the house? Unfortunately, the color decisions aren't mine to make, they're my wife's decisions. I know you're thinking they should be ours, but the truth is that as long as the colors of the girls' rooms isn't really off the wall, I don't care as long as I think the girls will like it. As for the rest of the house, I'm flexible and there's always The Home Depot nearby so we can get a different color later.

I'll be building a swing set for the girls soon, as well as a sand box, fort and slide combo that I'm sure they'll love. There are a good number of things that I want to do with the new house in order to make it ours, and to improve on it. We'll see how much I get to do.

Tonight's random thoughts were brought to you be the letters R, I and the number 6.

Lack of Stress...

Maybe there's something wrong with me, but I'm exhibiting an absolute lack of stress over the fact that we're about to get a house. My wife, Karen, seems to be flipping out at the thought, or so it seems from where I stand, while I'm just calmly planning to have zero sleep AFTER the book of paper is signed.

Of course, I've always been the type who could shrug off stress whenever I really needed to do so and pretty much not be affected by stressful situations. I figure it doesn't help the situation any to lose one's mind and become a wreck. I also try to help keep Karen's head on straight so she doesn't go postal or anything. I'm sure you're all interested in seeing such a phenomenon, right? :)

Anyway, three weeks 'til the scheduled closing and counting, then the better part of a week painting after work, and after that, moving all our stuff, then finally, unpacking all our stuff. It's not going to be a fun month (I'm assuming it'll take a good month for it all to be unpacked), but after that, It'll be our home.

Wish us luck! Now it's time to change outta my work clothes. It's too hot for long pants.

The offer is in!

We've located a home and we've put in an offer which has been accepted! It's a nice house with a large, fenced yard and a 2 car garage. Go to my wife's blog for a more complete description. I'm just happy to have the whole process coming to a close. It's been really draining.

Time to Search!

Great news! We've been prequalified for a home loan! We're trying right now to see a house this evening that we've had our eyes on for a while. The loan officer said it looks good for the loan amount we want and we're gonna try and see what we can do.

Sounds like our realtor is here. Time to go! Wish us luck!

Attaboy!

I received an attaboy from my supervisor at work today. It was from out of the blue and it made my day. This week has been a boatload better than last week. I'm looking forward to the job going forward.

I don't really have much to say other than that. Have a good one!

Pretty good!

Today flew by. Apparently, there were no major problems this weekend which required me to don my fire-retardant suit. As a result of today going smoothly, time seemed to fly by and before I knew I was working, it was nearly quitting time! That makes you feel really good when it becomes quitting time and you realize there were no major issues throughout the day.

Be sure to check out my wife's pictures of our trip to Lagoon last weekend!

Now we hope this trend continues. :)

Later!

Blah!

I don't even feel like posting tonight, but I will because it's been so long since I have. This last week was just blah! I want to have a good week. Hopefully this upcoming week will be worthy. Wish me luck!

G'night.

Utah weather sucks!

Why does this state's weather do what it does? Yesterday, the temps were in the 70s, the sun was out, it was a bit windy, and it was beautiful. Today, 32 degrees, rain, snow, and sleet. Tomorrow's forecast is for upper 40s to 50s and partly sunny, and the day after that, it's supposed to be in the 70s again.

At least in Virginia, there were 4 distinct seasons, each lasting AT LEAST 2 months. Here, there's 8 months of winter, 1 month of spring, 2.5 months of summer, and .5 months of fall. (At least that's what I remember from all the trips out here and from the last 8 months that I've lived here.) I was told today, that this is the only state, where you can experience all 4 seasons in one day. You can wake up to snow, then it warms up to rain by mid-late morning, after that, it clears off and turns hot by the middle of the afternoon, and finally cools off for the evening.

This is a crazy place in terms of climate, yet it's where I live now.

Go figure.

"H" is for heart attack!

So I attempt to set up an extra system for the Accounting department today after talking with the Accounting Dept Manager and the IT Manager about it. After getting hearty approvals, I begin. I get the system completed and suddenly, the Accounting Manager and his Assistant can no longer get to the financial database where all the information is supposed to be stored. My supervisor (the IT Manager) tells me it looks like the financial database might be gone. This is the moment that I wish I were wearing brown pants. I quickly realize what it feels like to expect an imminent heart attack.

We take a look at the error messages and after about 10 minutes, we realize that it's possible that the data is still there, but we can't quite get to it. A little bit of tweaking and voila! The database is accessible and the data is intact. About 20 minutes after confirming that the data was fine, the adrenaline wears off and I NEED to take a walk outside the office. I finally get my mind back into the right mode and can continue to work.

This has been a really rough week. I'm going to bed.

Time to sleep.

I'm worn out! I need to be getting into bed instead of writing in my blog tonight. I stayed up until after 1:30am last night putting together enough of my bedroom so I could sleep on my own bed. Then I had a really rough day at work on top of the residual exhaustion from digging out the roots Monday and Tuesday. Then I had to do Scouts!

I volunteered (what an idiot!) to help teach other prospective Cubmasters how to do their jobs without consulting my wife (stupid move, I know). Ooops! She had a Mary Kay party scheduled for tonight and wanted me to babysit. I'm sorry.

I just finished helping the Mary Kay lady out to her car with all her stuff. I'm not yet sure what the damage is, but I'm sure I'll find out soon.

G'Night!

I know I'm a geek. So What?

I'm playing Mutants and Masterminds. What, you're probably asking, is Mutants and Masterminds? It's a superhero style role playing game. Yeah, I'm a geek, So What? I like it and that's all that matters. We played tonight and my character (Hero name Jarhead) is a pretty depressing ex-marine who has a forcefield and can communicate with computers up to 60 feet away, saved an office full of people from domestic terrorists. What can you do, eh? I know I';m boring you, so I'll just say good night.

Good Night!

So, 5 bushes later...

Ok. The other three roots were killer! I am so pooped that I want to sleep right now! The total number of bushes I dug out were 5, when I was supposed to be digging out 1. The really big deal is that 2 of the roots were about 70-100 pounds each! It was a real chore to get them into the trash can. :)

The carpet was repaired today, which means the chore of trekking all our junk into the room will now begin. I'm not looking forward to that, but I AM looking forward to sleeping on my own bed - but not tonight. :)

So much for it only being one bush.

So, I dug up a couple of very large roots from an old lilac bush. These bushes have been around for at least 30 years and were very much settled in. Suffice it to say that I'm very tired and expect to be very sore tomorrow and the next day. I think I want to go to bed now.

G'Night!

It's all fine...except...

Well, here it is on Sunday and I'm all set to watch a few hours of car wrecks ... only one problem. The power button on the house big screen TV is broken and it doesn't respond to its remote. Only one thing to do - take the back off the TV to see what, if anything, I can do to fix the power button. So, I dive in and quickly find that there's absolutely nothing I can do to fix the power button, so I put the thing back together, preparing to rig some contraption so I can turn it on manually (I still might do so).

I step back, take a breath, and decide to approach from a different angle. I decide to see if there's a reason it doesn't respond to the remote's power button, so I take apart the remote and find that it's full of a sticky, gooey mess. Apparently, someone had spilled a drink of some sort into the remote and didn't clean it out (how could they, you ask). So, I give the remote a good hot bath and get the goo out of it, and guess what, It only half works :) The power button works again at least, though you have to press it really hard, and that enables me to turn the thing on! So I get to watch my race. Yay!

Later!

How about we nuke it?

[Long posting alert, you might want to get yourself a nice drink or go to the bathroom before starting]

So here I am, wandering in to work a bit late (for the reason, see the entry below) and what do I find, but a user, her name is Summer, who can't do any work because, they can't get into an important piece of software on our computer system. So, being the good Sys Admin that I am, I try to help her... and I try... and I try...

This piece of software is written in-house and is a pretty nice piece of software. It seems to work on everyone else's computer and they can all do their work. Eventually, I narrow it down to a localized phenomenon (<== long, but cool word, just say it out loud) and my supervisor, (who was telecommuting, but decided he needed to come in to work on this problem as well) decided that it had to be something with the Summer's machine. I informed him that the app worked correctly for anyone else who logged onto the machine so that wasn't the case, further, the application had been uninstalled and re-installed 8 ways to Thursday since my arrival at a little past 8am (I didn't tell him about the little past 8 part. :). Did I mention that Summer worked in Accounting? You know, the department that pays our wages by taking it from the sucker- er, customers who pay for our service. :) Anyway, this became our first priority of the day, to solve Summer's problem.

We eventually decided that it was more insideous than just her account. It was her account on that one machine as she was able to work on any other machine in the building, neither she, nor he (my supervisor) wanted to kill her AD account, so I dropped a baby nuke on her local account and allowed windows to rebuild it on the fly on that machine. This didn't work. (FYI: the other stuff I'm supposed to do on a daily basis is beginning to pile up :) My supervisor is really stubborn and would not admit defeat. Instead, he codes like a mad man while I research the problem on the Interweb (thanks go to my friend, Marc, for the term :). I begin to connect the dots and realize that the only other person to have a problem similar to this used to be in the same departmnt as Summer and had the same software installed on her computer. We also just created a new account for her because we suspected there was something wrong with her account since it was acting screwey 2 days earlier.

Things began to click into place at this point and we realized that the big change to the software that precipitated the problems with both accounts happened on Wednesday afternoon, just after Summer left early. The other user, Melanie, began having this problem at that time, and we thought we had corrected it (we were wrong), then we suspected that there was something wrong with her AD account as it was behaving funny anyway, so I created her a new one, and all was right in Melanie's world again.

Yesterday, Summer, the user who left early on Wednesday, took the day off and didn't user her computer for us to discover her problem. We had a day where there weren't any problems with the software, so we figured it was fixed. We were wrong! Finally late in the day, we realized that both these users had a particular piece of software on their machines when their accounts were created on them the first time and they were also gived admin user rights to the machines BEFORE their accounts were created. This combination corrupted the accounts (yes I know this post is boring, keep slogging through it and you'll see where this leads :) and made it so the software wouldn't work.

Finally, at 4:15pm, my boss admits defeat and tells me to nuke her account, then create a new one for her. I do so, and it all works great. Did I mention that as a possoble solution, I suggested we rebuild Summer's entire account about 10 minutes after I arrived this morning?

Well, I fixed the problem, but it took all day and sucked the brain out of both my boss and me. He wanted to fix the code, and I wanted to fix the configuration without nuking the account. We were both shown up by my gut instinct that said to nuke the account within 10 minutes of my arrival. FYI: It took me about 45 minutes to save all her data, nuke her account, create a new one, transfer all configuration and data to it, and restore her access. Who knew?

I could have saved myself, my boss, and the user a large headache by nuking the account at the beginning (which I considered, by the way), but they wouldn't have appreciated the effort it would have saved. So, I burned an entire day so that the next time something bad happens and I suggest
we take drastic measures, they'll all listen.

Hee Hee, I am evil!!! :)

Walking on water

I walked on water today.

Literally!

There was some carpet and carpet pad under the water, but I was indeed on the water!

Short version of the story: We live in the basement of Karen's parent's house. Karen and I (and our computers, financial info, and clothes) have one room and our daughters, Sara and Rebecca (and their toys and clothes) have the other. Our room, the one with the computers, flooded. Karen called me at work in a bit of a panic inquiring about shutdown order of the computers. We talked a little later and it was decided that I would leave work a little early to try to clear our room and attempt to begin the process of drying the flooring. With the help of Karen's brother, David, and his wife, Holly, we got the room cleared and the carpet pulled up. We then plugged in the fans to dry them out.

I'm sure if you check Karen's blog, you'll be able to find the long version. (I'm sure I'll get some flack from her about this comment, but what are spouses for, eh? :)

I am currently dead tired and can barely hold my eyes open as a result of the hoops we had to jump through to get to this point, but the good news is that the computers are just fine. :)

G'Night...

My Apologies

It's been far too long since I posted and I should be shot for that silliness. :) Last week was pretty busy at work and by the time I got home, I didn't really want to sit down and do anything with a computer. That happens to the best of us. Anyway, welcome back! The in-laws are out of town for about 10 days and Karen, Sara 'Becca, and I all have the house to ourselves. It will be refreshing, and somewhat odd, but that's how things go. I still have a problem with the backups at work, but I've come up with a way around the most critical parts of it. I'll call tech support tomorrow to see what they can do for me.

The time change was this past weekend, and it's brought havoc to my sleep schedule, unless Karen has begun assaulting me again in her sleep :), so I'm tired and sandy-eyed all the time. I'll turn in early tonight to see if I can remedy that for tomorrow.

I have a business meeting (IT Dept. team building thing) on Friday to play 3 holes of golf. I don't golf. I hate it (except for miniature golf) and would rather be at work than to go and play, but it is a team-building effort, so I suppose I'll go make a few divots. :)

Time to hit the sack. I did want to go to bed early tonight...

Wish me luck!

Just Jokes!

I just read the jokes at bitoffun.com and it was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud and waking the wife. Please be aware that there are some "off color" jokes there. In other words, they're NOT all G-Rated! :) Hee Hee!

At Last!

It's over at last! The party is officially over. Now I need to go to work for a week as a vacation for all the activity and work that was put into one afternoon. The kids enjoyed themselves and that's what it was all about.

The adults thanked us profusely and the kids offered compliments like "That was the best party ever - even better than mine!" That was my personal favorite. :) Sara hit the mother load in gifts, including a wagon equipped with a seat and seat belt! I'll be assembling that soon I know. The family party hasn't even happened yet, and I'm wondering where we're going to keep all the goodies she got. I guess we'll have to box up some more of her less frequently used stuff and take it out to storage.

My body hurts. Nothing intense, just a general ache that permeates every cell. I'm not sure how this will feel in the morning, but I'm sure I'll sleep very well tonight. In fact, I had a sneak preview of the sleep I'll enjoy later, but it was short lived as I had to go eat dinner. :) I'll probably go to bed a little earlier than usual tonight simply due to exhaustion. In fact Karen has already turned in...at 9:30pm?!?! Of course, she is the one that looses her mind for weeks at a time before such events. She usually relocates it shortly after the event is over. (I could have told her that it was buried under papers on her desk, but she wouldn't listen to any such thing. She'd prefer to go on thinking that it wasn't lost at all and was properly stored in her head. Silly woman.)

Anyway, I can feel the negative, feminine energy building in the upper atmosphere in preparation to strike me down for that "silly woman" comment above, so I'll call it a night so my computer can escape the blast zone.

35 lions in one room...

I'm tired. I made the mistake of staying up too late 2 nights in a row and now I'm paying for it. I need a nap in a big way, but I can't. I'll try to go to bed at a decent hour tonight and get plenty of rest for tomorrow's festivities.

Tomorrow is the big birthday party for Sara. The last count was that there will be 28 lion cubs!!! There will also only be 6 or 7 adult lions and lionesses for this bash. Cake, ice cream, pinata, bean bag toss, pin the tail on the lion, lion hunt, lion-lion-hyena (aka duck-duck-goose), wooden lion coloring, what's the time mr. lion (mother, may I), catch a lion by its tail, lions and tigers, lion rescue, gifts, lion ears, lion-filled goodie bags - the list is virtually endless! I'll be glad when it's over, because then I'll be able to take a nap. :)

I hope she appreciates this when she gets older. I hate to think about what we'll do for her 7th birthday party. As long as she has fun and Karen feels good about it, then it's all worth it, right? I guess we'll see won't we.

Once this one is done, we'll have just under 6 months to plan the next party, 'Becca turns 4 in September!

Octagonal thinking

So, I gave her an anniversary present today. It was a Canon Powershot S2 IS and I think she liked it. I could be wrong though. Only time will tell. :) I also gave her some flowers and a sappy card - she likes the sappy cards, I hate 'em. I wonder how long it'll take her to figure out the symbolism in the flowers. My best guess is that if she hasn't figured it out already, it'll be about 30 seconds after she starts reading this posting. *grin*

Anyway, I've been married for 8 years. That seems such a long time to some people, including me, but in geological terms, it's the blink of an eye. She got me a card, which is more than I requested. I'm satisfied.

I suppose I need to tell more people about this here blog business. I'm not getting very many comments. Let me think... Perhaps I'll tell my friends... *listens to the chirping crickets* well - I don't have very many of those, but I'll do what I can.

What's to be said?

I got a call from my mother today. It's not the first one I've received since we arrived in Utah, but the first one of substance.

We've been estranged for years, probably about 20 years or so (more than half my life) as a result of abuse (physical, verbal and emotional), her drug use, and other unsavory actions on her part. During the course of today's conversation, she apologized for a good many decisions she made, told me about how in those years, she's lived on the streets homeless for 2 years, served 2 years in federal prison, did copious amounts of drugs, traveled to South America (I can only guess why), been in knife fights, found religion, and cleaned up her life. She says she's been off drugs for the last six years and has been trying to find me. I can only take her at her word for all that. I also admit to not really wanting to be found by her as she brought pain to my life and I really don't need any more than I have already.

I'm not sure how I feel about re-integrating her into my life, but I'm willing to take things one day at a time in small baby steps. My daughters would like to have another grandparent to visit/receive gifts from and perhaps, if she's indeed reformed, they can learn a few things from her. Mostly things NOT to do, but every little bit is an education. Toward the end of her monologue, I told her that I couldn't think of anything to say, and she told me that she didn't need me to say anything.

We'll see where this leads.

Too Long.

It's been nearly a week since I've written. That's entirely too long. Let's see, what happened this week?

Monday, I worked (very good things there - I'm happy to be employed again and I like this job quite a bit).

Tuesday, I worked (I'm starting to see a trend here).

Wednesday, I worked (definitely a trend) and went to Council Round Table for Scouts. I'm now the District Round Table Council Commissioner (I hope I didn't just slaughter the title) - a long title for the person that gets to effectively run a Pack meeting for adults. :)

Thursday, I worked (nice trend) and took the girls to Disney on Ice. We saw Finding Nemo and the girls really had a blast, of course we kept them up too late, but they recovered. The show was pretty good, though I think I liked the Disney Safari one better.

Friday, I worked :) and got to GM a D&D campaign. I'm a geek, and as such, can be expected to do geekish things. Whatever your feelings on Role Playing Games, RPGs, I find it a good outlet for steam. Other people turn to sports, alcohol, gambling, exercise, computer games, etc. I hang out with a few friends and flip through rule books, while rolling dice. It's an acquired taste. :)

Saturday, I sat with 'Becca for the morning while Karen and Sara went shopping for birthday presents for 2 of Sara's friends, then we took her and another friend to a birthday party. After that we came home, spent a bit of time here, then Karen and I went out for our date night. We saw Fun with Dick and Jane at the dollar theater. It's a pretty good movie. I found it quite entertaining.

There you go, the week in a nutshell, not all of it, but the parts of it that I want to put up on here. :)

G'night!

Snow.

I have mixed feelings about snow. I like to play in it - sledding and all - but I'm not too fond of what it does the rest of the world who have to drive in it. Just because you have a 4-wheel drive vehicle, doesn't mean you can drive like it's the Indianapolis 500! Have a care and SLOW DOWN! I'm going to have to shovel snow - though the snow-blower will be doing most of the work :).

The forecast calls for several more days of show showers. Who knows what this is going to mean for the poor schlep (that would be me) who has to clear it all. We shall see.

I'm told that now that I live out here in Utah, I'll have to go skiing or snowboarding - you know get into the local sports scene. I'd prefer to go snowmobiling. We'll see.

To be honest, I want the snow to go away so Spring will have a chance to arrive. I like spring. :)

Spandex Jeans

We had a departmental lunch yesterday at the Macaroni Grill. It was superb! So much so, that I over-ate in a big way. I got up to leave and felt as if I'd be lucky to get back to the office. It felt like I had a five year old kid clinging to me on the inside! (I've carried my five year old daughter from the car to the house when she's fallen asleep during a short trip, but even that didn't feel the same.) I suppose it has something to do with squishing the rest of one's insides that makes the real difference. I made it back to the office finally and all I could think of doing was find a nice little corner and take a nap! A full belly of pasta tends to make one think in those terms. I resisted the urge and got some more work done.

I guess I'll need to wear spandex jeans the next time, or at the very least, remember to loosen the belt before it starts. :)

I like my new job. I've been there a week now and I feel welcome and it appears that people are glad to see that I'm here. I've been busy each day, but not overwhelmed. There are members in upper management that understand technology and its ramifications. That's a huge difference from the last place I worked. As I mentioned before, the pay is better, the responsibility is lower, the hours are more standardized, and the benefits are superior. What more can a person want in a career? Anyway, I'm still feeling the effects of yesterday's lunch and I think I'll go take a nap.

*yawn*

Good nigh- er... afternoon. :)

2 Full days

It's been a while since I've posted anything. That's because I've been busy and too torqued up to type about it, though I suppose that's why this thing is here to begin with. Anyway... After 2.5 days at my new job, I feel as if I'm fitting in just fine. I've been able to solve a couple of pretty big problems pretty quickly and get along with my coworkers well. I think I'll be fine here. :)

I'm bonding a bit with the other IT guys as well as the HR/Payroll/Accounting guy. We hit it off pretty well and are tentatively plan to do a few extracurricular activities together as long as the boss approves. :)

I'm a bit tired now, so I'll try to do better tomorrow. G'night!

I start tomorrow!

I accepted the job offer today and I start tomorrow! It turns out that I will get better benefits, more holidays, and better pay than in my previous position. In addition, I will not be the only member of the IT staff so there are other people I can trade ideas with. As you can tell, I'm pretty happy at the moment.

Tonight will be a short post because I don't really know what else to say.

Good night!

WooHoo!!! I'm employed! :)

I received a job offer this afternoon!!! :) This company called me in for a second interview at 1pm and by 5pm I had an offer! Apparently they really liked me. The pay is a little better than my old job, more vacation, and better benefits. I just have to give them my answer by 5pm tomorrow.

There are two other companies that expressed interest in a second interview and they'll have to call me by tomorrow morning to schedule an interview. I feel really good right now especially since there's all this interest in me at the moment. I'm Stoked!

Maybe a celebration is in order! :) Can you say ice cream?!

Good News... Maybe.

I got some good news this afternoon. The company that grilled me 2 days ago apparently liked me enough to ask for a second interview, with the higher-ups. Hopefully this means they want to give me an offer and are trying to get management on board as well.

Wish me luck!

Smashed flat!

Yesterday was really busy! I had a meeting all morning and a rather intense interview yesterday afternoon. They really grilled me! I came out of it feeling pretty good about myself. I have to bone up on M$ Exchange server and Cisco IOS. I knew these subjects needed to be addressed, but I didn't do too badly in those areas.

I got home and felt so worn out that I tried to take a nap, but that was thwarted by my wife and my kids. I just can't win!!! :)

So, I transferred Mechwarrior Vengeance over to my other computer and shot up some Mechs in an effort to relieve my frustration and perk me up a bit. It's funny how some things can perk a person up.

TTFN!

The worst appears to be over...

Becca appears to be fine now. After a restless night of severe gas pains, screaming, crying, etc., she now running around after her sister, playing happily and generally being NORMAL self. Isn't it amazing how quickly a child can recover from things?

I find myself wishing I could carve out a piece of my immune system and give it to my wife. (I tend not to get sick and she finds every illness in a 10 mine radius.) She's a bronchitis magnet and has had the fits of dry hacking coughs 3 times since we've moved here at the end of July. Each time, she's sick for about 2 months and the third time began about 2-3 weeks ago. This means (do the math here) that there's only been 3 months worth of time that she hasn't been ill out of just short of 7 months here. When she's hacking and coughing at night she needs to sleep in a nearly sitting position, which boils down to sleeping on the couch. Really hard on our relationship. She's back in the bed now (perhaps this is a short bout of sickness) and hasn't coughed much, so maybe her body has decided that it likes the state where she grew up. Only time will tell.

Anyway, it's a beautiful day, gonna be in the 50's today. I think I'll try to spend some time outside.

TTFN!

Here's a laugh for you.

Henry Ford dies and goes to heaven. At the gates, an angel tells Ford, "Well, you've been such a good guy and your invention --- the assembly line for the automobile --- changed the world. As a reward, you can hang out with anyone you want to in Heaven." Ford thinks about it and says, "I wanna hang out with God, Himself." The befeathered fellow at the Gate takes Ford to the Throne Room and introduces him to God. Henry Ford then asks God, "Hey, aren't you the inventor of Woman?" God says, "Ah, yes." "Well," says Ford, "You have some major design flaws in your invention
1. There's too much front end protrusion
2. It chatters at high speeds
3. The rear end wobbles too much, and
4. The intake is placed too close to the exhaust."
"Hmmm..." replies God, "hold on." God goes to the Celestial Supercomputer, types in a few keystrokes, and waits for the result. The computer prints out a slip of paper and God reads it. "It may be that my invention is flawed," God replies to Henry Ford, "but according to My Computer, more men are riding my invention than yours."

This is just one of the funny ones at Harvey's page.

Another one...

Your Hillbilly Name Is...

Big Jimmie Clementine

Hillbilly Name Generator

And I would be...

Whoo Hoo!!! I did well. :) Check my wife's results on the entry for 2004-10-18.

Gandalf the Grey If I were a character in The Lord of the Rings, I would be Gandalf, Wizard, a guardian against the Dark Lord. In the movie, I am played by Ian McKellen. Who would you be? Zovakware Lord of the Rings Test with Perseus Web Survey Software

Outlet

I now have an outlet. My other blog is up and running. There is a lot of red text on it to denote that it's not as nice as this one. I don't anticipate it'll get as much traffic as this one, but it's just an area for me to vent. You don't have to read it if you don't wish to, but I thought I'd let you know about it.

I guess I'd better do something useful now. I'll post more tomorrow unless something spectacular comes up this evening.

Good night!

Temperature. Work? Chocolate!

Becca has a fever of 101. She's had it off and on for 24 hrs so we've decided to take her to a doctor tomorrow. We'll keep an eye on it for the night and see what the doctor has to say tomorrow. There's been something going around for a while now and it seems that everyone is getting a touch of it.

On the bright side, I've received information that seems to support a second interview next week and another potential second interview for the week after that one. More on that information as I receive confirmation. Wish me luck!

Now if only I could convince my wife that she finds me as desirable as the prospective employers! :) Perhaps I'll run out to the store and buy some chocolate and pour it on me. What do you think? Will it work? Yeah, yeah, I know. She'll make me sit in a freezer until she could safely remove the chocolate. On second thought, I don't think it would do me much good to go get the chocolate. Maybe some raspberries...

Casey Jr...

My youngest, Becca, is happily playing with her grandmother's toy train singing - in her three-year-old voice - "Casey Jr's coming down the track..." It makes me smile to hear it and to see her playing with Puppity (her toy puppy). She's very amusing, precocious, and creative. The songs she sings are quite amazing - for a three year old anyway.

***NEWS FLASH***
This just in!
According to research performed by the esteemed free thinker, Rebecca Harris (3 years old), "every girl is a girl and every boy is a boy." This advanced concept is taking the scientific world by storm. "Her grasp of logic and reasoning is astounding!" claimed famed anonymous man, Joe Schmoe. Experts are climbing the walls in order to get a chance to interview her. More on this developing story at eleven.
***END NEWS FLASH***

It's about time

Well... It's finally happened. I now have a blog. I won't try to convince you that I hadn't thought about it before - because it would be a lie of biblical proportions - but I have finally gotten around to it.

My next trick will be to acquire new employment. I was released from my position as Director of IT at the local Peterbilt dealership, but I think that was a blessing in disguise as I've heard a lot of bad things about the decisions that have been made there in the past. Besides, I'm more of a team player anyway. I'd rather be part of a team than a one man show. I've had 3 good interviews in the last week and a half so I'm not in dispair or anything like that, but I'd rather be done with all the looking and applying, etc.

I'd also like it better when I wasn't being hounded by my mother-in-law. She's quite insane you know. She sees only the negatives in every situation and then goes about beating you with that negativity until you're concussed beyond all hope. Of course, she doesn't see it as being negative (Who would have guesses?!). She also doesn't see that she's nosy (once again, who would have guessed?!). I'm not sure how many times I've asked her not to pry into my personal thoughts and that it's not necessary nor is it appreciated for her to know everything about what's going on in my life. Instead, she treats me like a 5 year old. I HATE IT! What choice do I have but to refuse to answer her questions and tell her something like "It doesn't concern you" or "It's none of your business" in much kinder words of course.

I think I've gotten the worst of the angst out for the day. Please feel free to read about the rest of my family at my wife's first blog, her second blog, my older daughter's blog, or my youngest daughter's blog.

I can already see the need for me to create a second blog that won't be quite so G-rated. I think I'll do most - I'll try to make that ALL - of my ranting, raving, and complaining there and leave this one available for general, amusing, and otherwise positive things.

Speaking of amusing, find out what people really think about dolphins.

I suppose it's time to do some productive things now. I'll be back later. Maybe later today even.

This is a test.

This is a test.
It is only a test.
If this had been an actual post, it probably would have been more interesting.