The Night Before...

It's the night before Christmas and finally, everything's wrapped and shoved under the tree where it belongs. I had to work today for a half day, and then I did the last little bit of shopping I needed to do to be sure the things I wanted to get for people were acquired without prior knowledge.

Since the Queen handles our finances, she'd notice purchases and harass me about going over budget. I didn't want that harassment, so I waited until the last minute to get what I wanted to get her. Either there were a lot of other people who felt the same way, or a ton of people who just waited until the last minute because each of the locations I had to visit were INSANE!

Anyway, I'm just glad it's over. Now I can just go to bed and wait until Santa comes to town and delivers for the Princess and the Dragon. :)

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Merry Christmas!

This post was brought to you by the letters H, O, H, O, H, O, and the number 8 (9 on foggy nights)

Winter

Happy First day of Winter! Today is the Winter Solstice which means the days will be getting longer from now until the middle of Summer! Yay! Perhaps it will motivate me to get out and about more. :) We can always hope, right? :)

Anyway, I wanted to wish you all Happy Holidays and good cheer to everyone.

This post was brought to you by the letters T, Y, M, C, and the number 12.

Final Journey

Journeyman has officially been canceled. That SUCKS! This was a great show! It had a nice mix of drama, science fiction, and action. The mix was so well done that the Queen, who does not like science fiction, actually liked the show.

I'm sure she's going to deny that she doesn't like science fiction - she just pretends for my sake sometimes - but what matters is that she liked the show, or at least seemed to like it. It's too bad that the networks have decided that shows need to be absolutely perfect in order to be successful.

At least they knew early enough that it wouldn't go too much longer that they wrote a suitable ending for it. :)

I'm done with this rant, so I'm gonna call it a night. Later!

This post was brought to you by the letters R, S, K, T, and the number 23.

Get Paid to Post

So I have a chance to get paid for informing you nice folks of my opinions. Of course, this requires you fine people to read my posts. :) So if you all kindly read and occasionally click on the included links, I'd really appreciate it. Please read up on the word of mouth ethics I need to follow. Let me know what you think!

I also have a chance to make a few bucks by doing this and I'd love to make enough to purchase a few nice things for my family. The wife and kids deserve something for putting up with my crap for all these years.

One of my tasks is to review something that I'm interested in and let you all know about it. So, I'm going to tell you how much I enjoy World of Warcraft and why. This game allows me to step out of the real world and into the imaginary world for a brief amount of time each time I play. The down side of the game, as with any game, is the possibility of the player to blur the lines between what's real and not, resulting in hours and hours spent online and ignoring the real world. My advice to the new player is to play with moderation.

If you intend to play this game, I'd suggest using a relatively new machine with a wide aspect LCD monitor to get the most out of the game. Be sure to crnk up the settings and be pleased by the amount of detail in the imaginary game.

This post was brought to you by the letters P, P, P, and the number 20.

Decor!

Head on over to the Queen's blog and check out some pics! If they aren't up yet, it's only a matter of time. :) Merry Christmas to all!

I'm tired so I'm gonna cut this short. G'Night!

P. S. There are only 7 more days until Christmas! All you kids be nice and Santa just might bring you something nice. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters P, I, C, S, and the number 9.

Playing like CRAP!

I'm a Dallas Cowboy fan. They are arguably the second best team in all of the NFL, yet today, they played like the 32nd team on the league of 32. The game isn't over, but even if the Cowboys win, I'm far from impressed with them today. Most of the team seems to have taken the day off. Most especially the quarterback, Tony Romo.

That annoys me. I'll get over it, though.

This post was brought to you by the letters S, T, U, P, I, D, and the number 9.

The Lights are Finally Done!

I have finally completed setting up all tht Christmas lights. We now have a family of deer in the front yard, some twinkly snowflakes, a couple of lighted topiaries, and some stake-based decorations. I think it looks pretty good, but I'll ask the Queen to take a few pics and show them off to you all.


At the moment, I'm a little chilly, so I'm calling it a day.

:)

This post was brought to you by the letters L, I, G, H, T, S, and the number 3.

Christmas Concert

We attended the Christmas concert tonight at the LDS Convention Center. While I wouldn't call it my favorite event ever, the music was pretty good actually. The music was choral and while that isn't my favorite type of music, it fit the season.

I do have a question for you readers, though. What is the purpose of getting dressed up in one's "Sunday Best" in order to go sit in the dark and view a concert? I understand wearing decent, clean clothes, but come on! It just seems to be a bit of overkill to me. Of course, that's my perception and I'd appreciate you guys telling me why people do this. :)

The only other issue I had with the evening was security. I told them I had steel-toed shoes on (the ones I wear to work) and I had to go through metal detectors 5 or 6 times, each time wearing a little less. I was nearly to the point of saying, "Nevermind! I'll just go home. I don't want to be here that badly." They finally believed me when after using the wand, they verified that my shoes were indeed setting off the detector. This is worse that Airport Security where they'll just have me remove the shoes and x-ray them.

Such is life I guess. I lived through it so I guess I'm OK.

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

We Gots Sofas!

We now have a deep red sofa and love seat. Thi is our early Christmas present to our little family. I appreciate my colleague for helping get them here. I'm not happy about my rec room's current layout, but the furniture's here.

Anyway, I just want to say WooHoo for the furniture! :) It's here and all done!

This post was brought to you by the letters R, E, D, and the number 2.

Furniture a No-No!

Talk about HORRIBLE customer service! We ordered a sofa and love seat from this local furniture warehouse and asked them if we could pick it up on Wednesday at 5:30. They said yes!

I arrange to get a truck through my brother-in-law and it turns out that a cargo van was available instead. Great! No need for bungies or tarps! So we yank all the passenger seats out of the van and schlep out to the warehouse to pick up our items.

We arrive and find that there is not a SINGLE LIGHT on in the place.

WTF!!!

It turns out that there is no one there on Wednesdays and whoever said yes is an idiot.

If it wasn't for the fact that we really liked this sofa and loveseat (and got it at a really good price), I'd have said "Screw it!" and demanded a return of funds. Instead, I'm wrangling my brother-in-law into helping me pick it up tomorrow. Sorry, Bro.

Happy. <-- Please make note of copious sarcasm!

This post was brought to you by the letters, S, E, R, V, I, C, E, and the number 0.

Geeking!

I got to go Geeking tonight! :) Those of you who know me will know that I really enjoy D&D. I got the chance to play tonight instead of Friday. I can't play on Friday since my wife has a Creative Memories event to attend and most of the rest of my group can't play on Friday either.

So we got to play tonight and we killed another dragon! What fun! :)

Anyway, I'm in a pretty good mood as a result. Too bad I'm going to bed as soon as I possibly can. I'm really tired.

This post was brought to you by the letters D, I, C, E, and the number 20.

A Play

Tonight, we went to see "The Foreigner". It was a play at one of our local theaters. It was pretty good. We kinda 'lucked' our way into it.

It was quite amusing actually. :) I enjoyed the interplay between the characters and was pleasantly surprised I liked it. I won't give too much away, but the play is basically about how a socially withdrawn man is left in the company of a bunch of deep southern people. It is explained that he is a foreigner and understands no English. As a result, he is privy to all the private conversations of those people. The entertainment ensues.

This post was brought to you by the letters P, L, A, Y, and the number 3.

Simple Electronics

Simple electronics really know how to get me going. We have icicle lights that I've been trying to hang for about the last 2 weeks. I tested each set so that I could be sure to put up only the ones that were WORKING.

So, I wander out there in the freezing temps, hang up some lights, borrow a longer ladder, hang up some more lights, turn them on and...

Oh. The. AGONY!

One section of the lights I just tested, and carefully hung on the house, is out.

So-- What now?

I get a replacement bulb and go out there to find the offending bad bulb. I give them all a viual inspectionn and they all seem fine. I check the wiring and it all seems sound. Only one thing left, start swapping out bulbs until I find the bad one. An hour later, I find it (one of the last few I change out). Grrr... Stupid simple electronics...

So now my fingertips, ears, and toes are all numb, but the lights are hung. Happy Day!

So, tomorrow, I get to put out the moving deer, light up the topiary bushes, and line the walkway with nice seasonal lights. Sounds like I'll have some more numb toes. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters T, A, I, V, and the number 8.

Correction...

I went back and re-read my last post and realized that it reads as if I lost my position at that point. In actuality, I was just insulted by being introduced at a lesser title than the one I hold and not actually demoted on the spot. Please accept my apologies for any confusion this may have caused. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters O, O, O, P, S, and the number 6.

Stupid People

So how many times have you been demoted by your boss in front of potential company partners. How many times has your boss given you a 20minute task at the last 2 minutes? Mine just did and I want to smack him for it. Grrr...

How stupid can a person be?

This post was brought to you by the letters D, U, H, and the number 2.

Exhausted...

Hello all. I'm exhausted.

Whether or not you want to know about it, I'm going to tell you why. :) In an effort to spend less money (and as a result put more money in his own pocket), the owner of the company where I work rented out half of our space. Chowderhead!

As a result, we've had to uproot all our equipment and put it into half the space. Also, we have a really important meeting with some potential partners tomorrow. So the entire week, we've been killing ourselves to get the place clean and presentable.

So, I'm tired and I'm tempted to play hooky tomorrow and stay home. I WISH!

This post was brought to you by the letters R, E, E, K, and the number 5.

Battlestar Galactica

So, which of you out there are Battlestar Galactica fans? I'm talking mainly about the new series, but the old one would be fine. So, is anyone other than me truly saddened by the fact that it takes so increadibly long between seasons these days? I really like this series, but to make me wait so long between episodes is brutal. Too bad I didn't have nice huge capacity DVR when it the series first started. Oh well, such is life.

I like the fact that this new series makes better use of ethnicity than the old series. If my memory serves me correctly, there was only one minority in the entire show. That would be Boomer. :) There were pitifully few (if any) women in any sort of leadership roles. This new series has women and minorities all over the place. I'd like to see another brother or sister as one of the top-tier characters, but I'm not going to complain. :)

That being said, go watch the mini-series and as many seasons as are on DVD. It's a really good show. I really like what was done to the Cylons. I think you will too :)

This post was brought to you by the letters B, S, G, and the number 2003.

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The Digging is Complete!

I finally finished the expansion to my garden! At least the rough turnover of the soil by hand. :) I still need to till it up to properly incorporate the remaining plant material and grass clippings into the dark clay-like soil in order to loosen it up and enrich it. Next year's garden will be better than this year's garden was. :) It will be bigger overall and the things I plant won't be so crowded. I'll actually be able to weed it, not that weeding is fun, but I'll be able to perform said weeding next year since things will not be so crowded. :)

There are a few sprinkler heads that I'll have to change out and a few other specific things, but the hardest part is done! Yay me!

I'm sure most of you aren't interested in my gardening exploits, but there they are anyway. :)

The next large-ish project is to put in some duct work in the basement so it will be heated this winter. We'll see when that'll get done. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters G, A, R, D, E, N, and the number 7.

Turkey!

Tomorrow is Turkey Day! I get to cook the turkey! This bird is HUGE. Nearly 24 pounds of turkey meat waiting for me to season and shove into the oven.

JOY!

Anyway, I need to do some prep.

Later!

This post was brought to you by the letters T, H, C, and the number 23.

Haiku for Our Four-Legged Friend

Energy bundle,
active dynamo of fun -
Harry the fur ball.

To appease my royal family, Here's an alternate final line.

George the curious. :)

This post and the doggerel it contains was brought to you by the letters G, H, S, and the number 8.

Blame this on Gun Fighter

I will torture you all now with bad haiku and blame the Gun Fighter for it. :) You have my apologies.

Consumed by apathy,
subsumed in indifference,
the laughter has died.

This post was brought to you by the letters H, A, I, K, U, and the numbers 5, 7, 5, and 17.

Complainer...

Long time, no see. It's been nearly a month since I've last posted. I've been tempted to post quite a few times since then, but I realized it was a complaint and consciously decided not to post because it was specifically a complaint. I don't want to be known out there in the blog-o-sphere as a complainer, because I'm not. I'm sure the Queen will have something to say about that, but she's in a unique position and can comment as she wishes.

So, I'm going to try to cut down on my percentage of complaints in the coming posts. Let' hope I can make it happen. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters W, H, A, H, and the number 26.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to the Queen! :) She is 29 today. :)

This post is brought to you by the letters Y, S, F, B, and the number 29.

Vista?

So... M$ releases a new OS at the end of last year and so far, in nearly a year since the release, they haven't solved some simple compatibility issues with software that's LESS than a year old. In fact, software that's been released since the new OS was released doesn't work with it because of OS issues. M$ says there are issues with it's memory management which is at the root of a bunch of problems. Yes, I'm talking mostly about games (and the demos).

The argument can be made that it's the game manufacturers' responsibility to make their software compatible with the OS, but it also means that the OS manufacturer needs to make the OS able to deal with NEW software and give the game manufacturers USEFUL tools and specs (that aren't out of date immediately and/or changed every 2 months) to use to develop their games. I don't think M$ has lived up to their responsibility, especially since their OS costs so much more than it should.

If you compare the features that Vista offers, to the other OSes out there that offer comparable features (notably nearly any version of UNIX, any distro of Linux, or release of MacOS), you'll find that Vista is over-priced by a factor of 10! MacOS X for instance costs about $40 and Apple is still making money on each copy they sell. If Vista cost only $40 a copy, I think we could more easily swallow its flaws. As it is, $400 a pop should buy me an OS that was ready for the main stream and has all the tools that was promised. This thing is reminding me of what happened with Windows ME (and even M$ admits that ME was a failure).

This may or may not happen with this OS, but I'm only partially impressed with the OS. It has NOT lived up to the hype so far. Sure, you can perform word processing, web browsing, and other mundane things in this new OS, but you can't play the graphically intensive games people want to play. There are 3 versions of Battlefield, for instance, that you can't play on a Vista box. There are a number of other games that perform significantly WORSE on Vista than on any other OS. This was after making adjustments for Vista's memory issues.

Oh, by the way, WoW seems to work fine, but then again, this machine is so much faster than the other machine I was using that I wouldn't be able to notice any performance issues Vista did or did not introduce because the rest of the equipment is so much better.

I think I'll have to dual boot my machine in order to run the apps I'd like. Currently, it looks like I should get a second hard drive and install XP Pro on it. That way, I can have my gaming setup on one drive and everything else on another.

This post was brought to you by the letters X, P, and the number 2.

At home

So Last Night, my walking pneumonia decided it wanted to kick my ass again and the net result is I wake up with a 101 degree fever, pretty hefty lower back pain, sweating through my shirt, and no sleep for my trouble. What gives? I felt OK yesterday and have been on the Doctor's meds for a few days now.

The fever broke less than an hour ago so I decided to get dressed and imitate a human for a bit. :) I guess it's time to remote into work and get some things done.

This post was brought to you by the letters T, E, M, P, and the number 101.

Finally

Hello all. It's finally happened. Last week, I was allowed to order my laptop. I got the rep to expedite it and it arrived yesterday. I'm using it right now! :) Of course, the Queen isn't happy with me at the moment because I've installed WoW on it and I'm waiting for the updates to download. :)

I'm so far really happy with my new laptop. It's a Dell Inspiron 1720 and it's pretty much maxed out. I'm stoked! I just have to finish installing the rest of my software. That'll take the better part of the rest of the week.

I've been diagnosed with mycoplasma (walking pneumonia) and I'm on meds to clear it up. I'll be better in a few days.

This post was brought to you by the letters U, D, I, S, and the number 8.

Long, Long Time

Hey, it's me. Yes, I'm still alive, though sleep has been a luxury that I've been missing out on, but that's not why you're reading this. You're reading to see if I'm ever going to post again. Well, here it is! :)

Seriously, I think my life is a bit boring, but I decided to please (maybe) you with it anyway, because it's been TOO LONG!!! :) The last couple of months have not been the most pleasant from an employer point of view. I've been putting in too many hours, working too hard, for too little pay, and too little appreciation. That being said, I'm still employed and plan to stay that way. :)

So, I'm still alive and still in pretty good health, though I'm not getting enough sleep. Such is life, eh? :)

On a good-ish note, The Queen was finally diagnosed (after 20 years or so) with mild asthma attacks. For the last couple of decades, she's had Bronchitis 2-4 times a year and it turns out that the majority of that was probably NOT Bronchitis. Instead, it was asthma attacks! Head on over to her blog and read about it.

I'll post more later. Right now, I'm going to try to get as much sleep tonight as I can.

This post was brought to you by the letters P, A, Y, R, A, I, S, E, and the number 20%. :)

Equipment's here! Anyone have time to put it in place?

The equipment I mentioned in my previous post has arrived. Unfortunately, I haven't had very much time to work on getting it in place. I need my boss to allow me to take the company offline for a day so I can relocate the equipment to the rack where it'll be more safe in case of environmental issues (the collapse of the $30 folding Wal-mart table that $16-$20 K of hardware sits on that happens to house the company's entire business. At least I'll be able to mount every server as well as all the tele-com equipment in the rack once I get the chance to really work on it. The next few days to weeks will be really busy.

This post was brought to you by the letters S, L, E, E, P, and the number 0.

Work Sux!

As you can probably tell from the title, I'm not particularly enamored with my place of employment right now. Basically, as a result of the greed of the owner, all requests for equipment that will give a modicum of disaster aversion over the last year have been denied. As a result, we suffered that catastrophic failure that all Sys Admins hate. The production database server's hard drive failed and this last week has been hell! I've had 2 16+ hour days, most other days were 10+ hours and I went in yesterday as well. The week before, we hit the wall in terms of storage space (we need more hard drive space!) and had to babysit several business critical tasks until 2am several nights. Since hitting the storage space wall, I've been staying up until 1am at least each night in order to babysit the servers remotely.

My immediate supervisor told me to order the equipment I need and that he'd take the heat. :) Nice-ish guy, but it was too late to avoid the galactic headache associated with the owner's actions (that should probably be LACK of actions) that caused the issue in the first place. To top it off, I'm salaried so there will be no real compensation for the last week and a half of pain.

Anyone need a Senior Systems Administrator? I'll consider relocating for the right package. :) I'll have to clear this with the Queen of course, but I'll consider it.

This post was brought to you by the letters N, A, S, and the number 16.

2 Weeks

It's hard to believe it's been 2 weeks since I last posted. The dates don't lie about it though. :) No changes as yet.

Why is it that I can't ever get on track the way I want? It's as if the universe has decided that no matter what, I'm always going to be just a bit short of my goal.

On a happier note, a different group of friends has decided to form a guild on a different WoW server and have asked me to join. I'm running an undead warlock on the Horde side. I'm interested to see some of the play from the other side. We'll see what happens, I might stick with it for a while.

This post was brought to you by the letters G, I, W, Y, and the number 45.

Possible change...

Hi all,
Sorry to have been so long since my last post, but I'm considering a change. I'm not going to go into details, because this post will turn into a rant if I do. It's work-related, so don't worry yourself too much about it. It may take a while before I work it out and get back into regular posting.

This post was brought to you by the letters U, N, D, E, R, P, A, I, D, and the number 1.3.

Violation!

Yesterday was P-Day! Yes, I got to go into the doctor's office, get bare, and get poked and prodded until the doctor declared me fit to live. After that not-so-pleasant experience, I'm told that my cholesterol and blood pressures are both better than they were 1 month ago. :) That's encouraging, right?

Anyway, I went to work after that and there was a bunch of drama with a member of the sales team getting absolutely fed up with their supervisor and quitting on the spot. I can't say that I blame her as her supervisor is an unmitigated ass, but it's not my department.

That evening, the Pink Princess had baseball clinic and first practice on her new season of coach-pitch baseball. That went pretty well though I'm going to need to work with her a bit on throwing, catching and batting. :) She has enthusiasm, so that makes up for a lot, but I think she can be one of the better players on the team is I work with her a bit.

That night, our stupid neighbors decided to play basketball until after 1am so I called the cops on them. I guess their cop-radar was on and they stopped just after I put the phone down. Then the Purple Dragon had a couple of nightmares and I had to deal with that.

Suffice it to say that I was draggin' when I arrived at work this morning. :)

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

You Leeches Suck!

I suppose they all have to start somewhere, but I apparently had an apprentice leech this morning. I'm not sure if giving them a pound of flesh could have hurt any more that this morning's experience.

Not getting enough blood flow? Just wiggle the needle a bit - push it in, pull it out, eventually you'll get the end to where it needs to be so the essence of me can come pouring out.

Perhaps it's part of their voodoo ritual that requires inflicting pain on the target of the spell. I don't know and I don't care as long as I don't get the same lab tech next time.

Amateur...

This post was brought to you by the letters, O, U, C, H, and the number 675.

Leeches...

I'm scheduled for a physical at the doctor's office next week. In order to do that, they want me to show up at the doctor's office about a week early so they can slurp out some blood. That means no food or drink from midnight tonight until they have their pound of my flesh tomorrow.

I plan to be there when they open the doors so I can minimize the damage to my system. :)

The Leeches! How dare they use some of my essence to perform their foul alchemy! I shall hire a wizard of my own to counter their fell intentions! Or not... :)

Anyway, this post was brought to you by the letters S, D, K, and the number 21398.

Relax...

I've been ordered instructed by my doctor to figure out a way to relax on a regular basis. Well, not quite as plainly as that. She said that my blood pressure is a bit high and that they need to see 3 high readings in a row before they are inclined to take steps since she's new to me and all. I have another appointment next month to see those blood-sucking leeches nice folks at the family doctor's office. I'm hoping the queen will be willing to assist me with those relaxation techniques. Perhaps I can convince her that having chicken multiple times a week is a suggestion prescription from our doctor! :) That would be nice...

Wish me luck!

This post was brought to you by the letters I, S, K, and the number 5.

Long Weekend

It's been a long weekend already and the 3rd day hasn't even started. :) I've been doing things around the house and attempting to rest and enjoy the holiday a bit. The vegetable garden is in and doing well so far - though we received 2 more tomato plants this evening and I plan to add them to the garden tomorrow evening.

I plan to do some painting tomorrow and will paint the accent wall of the master bedroom as well as the walls of the upstairs hallway. This is after I've made breakfast for the family since I slacked a bit this morning. :)

Anyway, this will be a short post as I want to do some prep for tomorrow's painting task. Thos post has been brought to you by H, D, L, and the number 6.

Of Doctors and things...

I have been remiss in my duty of informing you all of what's going on here in our little kingdom. You all have my apologies for that. The truth is that there's nothing much to tell other than I've gotten our garden very nearly complete and my sore throat is interesting in it's ability to avoid diagnosis. :)

The garden was finally tilled thanks to a nice neighbor that allowed us to borrow their tiller. I have planted our strawberries, pumpkins, tomatoes, bell peppers, corn, peas, onions, and carrots. I'll be planting the cucumbers and zucchini after work tomorrow. :) After tomorrow, it's just a matter of keeping the garden weeded and watered. We'll have some veggies in just under 2 months.

As for the sore throat, I noticed a very mild case of sore throat when I woke up in the mornings early last week. It was so insignificant, that upon getting out of bed I completely forgot about it. On Thursday about mid-morning, it suddenly became a jagged knife stabbing me in the front of my throat whenever I swallowed anything. It was so bad that I decided to go to the doctor so I could get it diagnosed. It hurt so much that I didn't eat lunch and instead went to the doc in the middle of the afternoon. If you know anything about me, then you know that I rarely go to the doctor, and that it had to be pretty painful to send me running to a doctor. Do you know what the doctor said? Of course, you don't - you weren't there! :) But I've already given you enough information already in this post that you'll guess the message if not the exact delivery. They can't find anything wrong and all the tests they ran came back negative. She told me to take OTC meds for the pain and sent me on my way.

I've been dealing with the stabbing pains since then and they have actually eased a bit since then. Hopefully, it really is nothing, though I'd like to see them find something so there's an explanation for it at least. I know the vampires certainly took enough blood to study - or maybe it was to make mixed drinks. Sheesh!

Anyway, that's all for this post. I'll do better with posting. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters A, G, H, and the number 7.

Oops!

Apparently, I'm more at fault that I gave myself credit for the issues last Friday. To all parties involved, you have my apologies...

This post was brought to you by the letters O, O, P, S, and the number 3.

Happy Birthday...

Warning! This post is a downer. Unless you want to be abruptly and unceremoniously ripped down from your life high, move right along.

You have been warned...

So I officially turned "One Year Older than Dirt" a few days ago. Better than the alternative, I suppose. Anyway, I knew there was a reason I HATED birthdays and this birthday helped to solidify that feeling. The Queen became livid pissed at me for helping pick up a room after I got home from taking the Princess to baseball practice. Then, she screams at me to inform me that dinner's ready. It wasn't a pleasant experience. The net result is that she's yelling/screaming at me shortly before her family is supposed to come over and wish me Happy Birthday. I put on my "Hey, how's everybody doing?" mask and pretend nothing ever happened. I'm guessing that I did/didn't do/say something that pushed her over the edge. I can only guess because we haven't spoken much since then. I don't know why she became so angry, but I was the target, and that doesn't feel so good nor does it seem very fair to me. That's part of marriage, right?

I think I'd appreciate it if there is no celebration for any of my future birthdays. Don't get me wrong. I appreciate the fact that people WANT to celebrate, but it seems that my birthday celebrations always tend to devolve into something I don't want to remember.

My apologies to all of you for posting something that is bound to bring you all down. Next year, I'll treat my birthday as what it is - just another day.

I did get some nice presents, but I still don't feel particularly good about the event.

This post was brought to you by the letters R, A, T, E, D, and the number 4 (out of 10).

I'd like to thank...

Everyone who voted for me. :) I've been nominated for Hottest Daddy Blogger by OTJ! You have my deepest thanks. I don't really hold out hope of winning the thing (primarily because I don't think my blog is quite popular enough), but I oh, so appreciate the thought. :) Also, it looks like I have 4 whole votes (that may have changed by now) and I know that 3 of them are from the Queen, OTJ, and me. At least I'm NOT on the last page. Thanks to everyone who has voted for me so far. :)

--Start shameless plug--
Please vote for me!
--End shameless plug--

The Princess has had her first baseball game a couple days ago. Of course, there was no score kept, there were no outs recorded and everyone got a chance to run the bases. She had a boatload of fun - that's really all that matters, right - and I'll be purchasing a glove for her soon so I can assisting her here in the back yard with her fielding, catching, throwing. :)

Anyway, this post was brought to you by the letters V, O, T, E, and the number 4.

What's up with that?

GEEK ALERT!!! SCIFI SPOILER ALERT!!!

There, now that I've scared all you normal folks away... :) What do you think of the final season 3 episode of Battlestar Galactica. How can so many people in high positions be Cylons? The big question is how was it done? Were they human at some point? Did the actual human get kidnapped and replaced? How did they do it?!?! :)

If you haven't figured it out by now, I love that show!!! The reason I've waited so long to post this is to keep from spoiling anyone's enjoyment of the program. 5 never-before known cylon models all placed in key positions in the Human fleet. Colonel Ty, Chief Tyrol, Lt. Thrace, Thrace's husband, and the president's chief of staff.

Finally...

Phew! The giant project at work is finally over! Everything's been done and deployed so now there are just a few minor issues to mop up. I should have time to post more entries and comments for a while. :)

The weather is finally beginning to act like spring. Warm days and mild nights. It's caused the grass to grow green and a few flowers to peek out at us. It's caused me to start working on an area to put in a garden as well as look into other projects that need to be completed.

It also means that it's finally warm enough in the basement to spend a bit of time down there without sprouting icicles on my nose. :) Look forward to hearing about more of my WoW exploits as well as how geeky I am.

Let's hope my friend, M, is good for D&D this week. He took last week off to spend time with his wife. Kinda silly to cancel a session for that, right? :) Kidding!

Anway, it's good to have the pressure valve opened a bit at work so there's not quite so much managerial stressing gonig on at work. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters, G, R, E, E, N, and the number 12.

Of Parties, and Gardens, and Things...

Whew! The party's over... The princess had her public birthday party on Friday (public = people other than family). We had a house full of 15 (you read that right- 15) 6- and 7-year old girls. Some of them behaved absolutely horribly. We had to deal with all the drama that ensues when a bunch of females get together (yes, you read that right - it sounds horrible, but I haven't witnessed a large crowd of females without drama and until I do, I'll make that statement as if it's 100% factual).

Anyway, the party sucked far too much of the life out of the both of us. I wouldn't have a problem if we didn't have to suffer through any more of these parties - especially if there is a gaggle of girls.

I have been working on putting in a vegetable garden. OK, I've been digging in the dirt so that we'll have a place to plant the vegetable garden. I've have just under half of the space tilled and will be working on it for the rest of the week - if I don't get snowed out Tuesday afternoon.

The Queen and I just had our 9th wedding anniversary.

Work is very busy this week so I'll probably be somewhat scarce in new entries.

This post was brought to you by the letters G, I, R, L, S, and the number 15.

Makes me wish...

Days like today make me wish I worked outdoors again. :) The weather was gorgeous! It was just about 70° with very little breeze and I would be ecstatic if it were like this year-round! Of course we need to have a bit of rain on occasion, but I can live with that. The princess and the dragon are outside enjoying the swing set and I just came in from uncovering the deck furniture. If it stays warm enough, perhaps we'll eat on the deck. Of course, that depends on what the weather does in the next 30 minutes or so. :)

The Queen is off getting the finishing touches for dinner. So far, it's been a pretty good day. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters N, I, C, E, and the number 70.

High Pressure

I'm sure you've all had enough of my complaining about work and the asinine ideas the owner has about what's most important to keep his business afloat. The business is based on a service provided to clients through a web site and via email. The entire business relies on the servers. This mental giant refuses to pay for physical protection for the equipment nor will he pay for proper electrical protection for his equipment. His servers are sitting on a folding table!!! There's no redundancy and the core machines are out of resources. How long does this intellectual colossus think his business can continue to function on the ragged edge? I'm also under pressure to get our developer (a new employee mind you) to deliver a significant code change before becoming familiar with our software source code. Oh, by the way, we only have the 1 developer since it costs money to have 2 at the same time. Go figure...

Anyone out there in the Salt Lake area looking for a senior level windows systems administrator? I'm only half kidding. If the pay and benefits are right, I'll consider it. :)

OK, enough of the stupidity. If you don't read OTJ yet, you should. She has managed to figure out exactly why some of us blog. If you're wondering why blogging seems so important to some of us, then give her a read. Be warned, that she is very popular and you'll probably see a ton of comments to each of her postings. They're pretty entertaining posts and she loves to play with photoshop. Enjoy!

It's been a while since I posted as it would have only been complaints about work. Please accept my apologies for slacking on you all. :) I'll try to post more often.

This post was brought to you by the letters M, T, O, E, and the number 9.

The Quest is Complete!

I was just on a quest to procure dinner. I was triumphant! KFC came through for us! :) We had chicken, well a 12 piece chicken dinner w/ potatoes, cole slaw, and biscuits. Sorry, nothing any more exciting than that, dear readers. :)

The quest was not without perils, however. It seems that Utah is chock full of horrible drivers. I'm positive, though not 100% sure, the every state in the union requires a driver to use the signals when turning and changing lanes. They also require people to take steps to avoid accidents. Steps such as looking for oncoming traffic and NOT pulling out in front of it. I'm quite happy that I don't trust any other driver on the road when I'm out and so I drive extremely defensively. I try to ALWAYS be aware of what other vehicles are around me and where my escape routes are. Who knows what could have happened if it weren't for my mistrust.

Incidentally, The Queen and I took the princess and the dragon sledding today. We enjoyed ourselves immensely. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters Y, W, G, E, and the number 7.

Chicken was Made!

We had chicken a couple of nights ago. It was nice. It had been a while. We'll have to make chicken more often. :) Hopefully the Queen will forgive me for asking so often.

I'm looking for a junior developer. Anyone know someone in the Salt Lake Area who wants a job? I need to hire an entry level .NET developer. Anyone interested? :)

My character died last night in D&D. It was a sad, sad, day. She was turned into a wraith and then attacked the party. She had no choice in the matter. Now, it's time to create a new character so her death can be avenged. :)

I'm in a strange mood today, so I'll keep this short. Who knows what I'll say if I don't. :)

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

Queenie is Pissy!

The Queen is in a foul mood. MSN's websites all suck and have screwed up her various and sundry free accounts. Unfortunately, I seem to be a magnet for her ire. Why is it that I am the target for her anger when Microsoft "screws the pooch"? I guess I'll just have to avoid her until either the problem is fixed or she figures it out. I don't think she wants my help, not that I can fix anything, but it sucks that she blames me for anything technical that happens. I guess it my own fault that I get blamed. That doesn't reduce the intensity of situational hooverage, however.

If anyone out there has figured out how to change existing email information associated with the MSN Live service or MSN games, please let me know. I'm planning on looking into it myself, but if anyone else has had any run-ins with MSN's services, please let me know. Better yet, contact the Queen and let her know. I appreciate any assistance you can provide.

On the bright side, the Datona 500 coverage starts in about 30 minutes. I'm looking forward to seeing a ton of wrecks. :) I don't want anyone hurt, but I like seeing the cars get trashed. It feeds the testosterone need in me.

This post was brought to you by the letters M, A, D, and the number 24.

1 Million Dollars

The Admiral has asked anyone who reads her blog to tell what would be done if they had a million dollars. Here's what I'd do. Set up college funds for my girls, pay off all debts, move into our dream home, and buy our dream cars. I figure this would take about half of it. The rest of the money would be invested for early retirement with a few donations here and there. I'd continue to work, though a large portion of what I earned would go toward that early retirement I mentioned.

I feel that once I have a million banked after the debts are all paid, I'm in good shape to retire because I could life on about 5% interest pretty well when there aren't any expenses other that utilities. :) I'd retire immediately if I started with 1.5 million.

This was a nice exercise in "What If". Thanks to Admiral Bobcat for this assignment! :)

On another note. I'm home sick today. Rather, I came back home sick today and have slept for about 3 hours since returning at this point. This isn't a good way to spend VD, but then again, I'm not that enamored with this particular holiday anyway. That would explain why I'm wearing all black today. I'll let you all know that I am NOT stupid, however. The queen did receive something I know she likes for this useless commercialized holiday.

If you love someone, don't wait until February 14th to tell them. You should be telling them EVERY day in the things you do and the things you say. Your actions at the very least should say it each and every day. That is all.

I think I'm going to go back to sleep now. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters D, S, E, L, R, and the number 8.

Find a Scape Goat

So now they're trying to fabricate a reason to blame computer games for the actions of a troubled individual. Get real folks! If a person has trouble separating reality from fiction, it's NOT the fault of the game!

I can't believe the media is going along with this nonsense! C'mon, folks! a person is responsible for his/her own decisions even if that person has trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. It's like blaming cars for auto accidents.

OK, enough of my ranting. We have a DVR now! :) Yay! That means we aren't held at the mercy of the networks anymore! We can play with the girls without missing our most favorite television shows. Yeah, that means we're really boring, but that tends to happen once you've had kids and they aren't in their teens yet. :) Once they get to their teens, I hear things get really interesting...

I think I've been working too much. I have a touch of the illness that has been going around for the last few weeks and haven't been getting the rest I need in order to fight it. I think I'm losing the fight though. Each morning finds me feeling worse than the previous. I need a day off in the middle of the week. I think that would help. I think I'm going to go to bed early tonight as well so I can get an extra hour or so of sleep. It might make a difference. :) Please send me "Get Well Soon!" vibes so I can get back to normal. Thanks! :)

This post was brought to you be the letters T, I, R, E, D, and the number 6.

Some People...

My long awaited Monday night 24 session was interrupted today by some idiot gunman trying to kill some local residents at a local mall. As a result of his stupidity, all the local stations went to live coverage of the developments. This started about 15 minutes before the 2 hour 24 marathon was supposed to start. This means that no 24 for me tonight. I guess I'll have to try to find it on the Inter-web (a phrase from one of my friends).

I feel for all the families who lost members tonight, but if the guy had waited until there weren't so many families around, and he was surrounded by SWAT before his attempt to commit suicide, there would be far fewer families contemplating burial of loved ones. Please don't misunderstand me, I don't approve of what the guy did, and I DO know that it was a serious matter. I just don't get why so many people decide to try to take out innocent by-standers when they decide to take their own life. My stand: "If you really feel the need to end your life, then do so. That's between you and God. By all means, leave everyone else out of it!"

I'll dismount my soapbox now.

Abrupt subject change: The one bright note to this evening is that our DVR was installed tonight. We now have the ability to record 2 shows while watching one that was recorded earlier. Now we aren't so dependent on the TV schedule. Yay!

This post was brought to you by the letters N, U, T, C, A, S, E, and the number 54.

Too Much Time Wasted...

...on people who don't deserve my time makes me feel bad. The owner of the company I work for is apparently too ignorant to realize that his entire business is based on IT, but he's too cheap to take care of that part of his business. (It would make my job so much easier if he would. I guess I'm just asking for too much, eh?) Anyway, I've neglected you all and that makes me feel bad as well. Let me apologize now for that neglect. My work has had me far too busy over the course of the last 2 weeks. I can't see any let up any time soon, so I'll apologize in advance if I'm a little too busy to post very many times.

My heart goes out to OTJ for her recent loss. You have my sympathy. I have a good idea how you're feeling right now.

As for my DILF progress, I lost another couple of pounds last week for a total of 5 pounds, but managed to gain it back over the weekend. LOL doesn't that just suck! :) That just means I get to start all over again.

This post was sponsored by the letters S, U, C, K, and the number 1.

Another Day, Another Try...

OK, so here I go again. I'll try again to post the image to the site that would not post last time. :) Here goes!

Yay! It worked this time!!! :) So are you one? We'll see if I am soon enough. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters A, E, I, O, U, and the number 7.

Are you on the list?

Not that list, THIS list! It has an associated image as well, but I'm having the worst time trying to get it to upload. At some point, I'll have a little luck. When I do, I'll upload the image.

This post was belatedly brought to you by the letters H, C, L, S, O, and the number 4.

A Rock and a Hard Place...

So... my company's developer accepted a position elsewhere and will be leaving at the end of the month. Unfortunately, there are all these big plans from management to do all these different things that involve developers. They haven't allowed me to increase my staff which would have helped this problem before it became a problem, but that's life, right? Wrong! I know they expect that we'll continue where we left off without any break and without any interruption. They are so short-sighted. We need at least 2 people capable of covering each position. I know that may seem a little obvious to some of you, but we're talking some real rocket scientists here. The entire situation puts me squarely between the aforementioned extremely dense objects.

Now... on to other things. I'm enjoying the book Wicked. Many thanks to Admiral Bob for turning me on to the book. It's quite entertaining. Once I'm done with it, I think I'll go on to the next Harry Potter book that's lying on the floor of the Rec Room. I haven't read it yet and it's been around here for quite some time. I've been pretty good at controlling myself... :)

GEEK WARNING!!! GEEK WARNING!!!
My gaming group has completed my Sidewinder campaign and we've moved on to a v3.5 D&D campaign. I'm having a great deal of fun with this one. Of course, I'm playing a H. Elf Ranger/Sorcerer (pretty standard for me) and it's a she. About 50-60% of the time I play a female character. Go figure! :)
GEEKINESS COMPLETE!

I guess I'll go read some Wicked since I'm too tired to play WoW. It's also a bit too cold in the basement to play WoW at the moment. The basement is unfinished and there are no heating ducts in the basement. We get a little residual heat when the furnace starts and from the computers down here, but that's it. We borrowed my Mother-In-Law's space heater, but it pretty much has to be within 10 inches to be effective so the Queen uses it most of the time. She gets cold easily... :)

By the way, the temps around here have ranged from 0° F to about 20° F. That's cool enough to make me agree that it's cold. :) I'm sure the Queen will be happy to read that I admitted to that.

This post was brought to you by the letters F, R, I, G, I, D, and the number 0.

A little Help... Please? :)

Hey all you folks that read my blog, can I ask for your assistance? Please comment on the Queen's blog and ask her to complete the vacation updates? :) Also ask her to finish picking out songs for out DVD Slide show of our vacation. Thanks!

I've probably just insured she'll divorce me and take all $38.42 I have to my name... :)

Anyway, it's been too long since I posted and for that I apologize. I guess I've been too busy thinking of heady things and pondering life, philosophy... who am I kidding?! I've been too self-absorbed and lazy to post and that's the whole of it. On a positive note, the Queen and I had chicken a few nights ago and that was VERY nice. I can't remember the last time I had to preheat the oven for 2 hours, though.

I'm sure this will earn me the privilege of paying alimony for the rest of my life... Queen, dear, can we make chicken again before I have to sign the papers??? How about meatloaf?? :)


Boy, I'm gonna get into so much trouble from this post, but I'm in a pretty good mood at the moment and don't want to waste it. Tomorrow will be here soon enough and the mood will be destroyed. :)

I'm sure that any of you who read OTJ, will get the DILF reference, but for those of you who don't, I plan to play along with the prospective MILFs and shed some unnecessary pounds. My goal is to lose about 35 pounds to get to my ideal weight, but we'll see just how close I can get. I want to become that guy with whom my queen wants to regularly make chicken-stuffed-meatloaf. Wish me luck! :)

This post was brought to you by the letters L, A, R, D, B, U, T, T and the number 35.

Whew!

I'm happy to be back. All the long lines and pushing the girls around, etc has finally come to an end. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the time away from work. I deserved it, but our vacations all seem to extract more work from me that the amount of relaxation it gives. Perhaps it's just me...

Anyway, I'm back now and if you want to read about the vacation, you can check out the Queen's blog and you can get a day-by-day running commentary, complete with instant replay and illustrations... OK, so no play replay or illustrations, but you do get lots of pictures. :)

Yesterday was actually the first full day we were back, but I just wanted to be lazy. :)

Enjoy the brevity of this post as you read the Queen's novel.

This post was brought to you by the letters S, F, K, L, and the number 5.

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. :)