Any of you monkeys want a banana?
Posted at 9:34 on Monday, December 31, 2007
Preparation for the picking party continues. Here's hoping I followed the recipe for Rose's chili adequately. The last batch was great, but if methane is a greenhouse gas, I helped contribute to global warming all by myself. You have been warned.
I was recently reminded that kids, even the best kids, will sometimes, shall we say, prevaricate, to cover themselves. My understanding of an incident some years ago involving one of my children and friends drinking (no names, you know who you are) was corrected by another child when I was told that, in fact, XXXXXXXXX had been drinking and was drunk, but after coming home that night, assured Rosalie and I that they had not. Being the trusting fool that I am, I accepted the story at face value, because I wanted to believe it. I was so proud that he/she had been wise enough to resist, and relayed that pride to people over the years. When it was mentioned to a sibling, the response was laughter and a comment like "He/she couldn't believe that you bought the whole story and didn't get in trouble" or something to that effect. It was hard to accept that I had been fooled that way and had used the event over the years as a anecdote about maturity, responsibility, blah, blah, blah. If the culprit was still at home, I would exact retribution, but the opportunity for that is long past. I can remember a few times growing up where I chose to "misrepresent" the facts to get something or get out of something, but I guess I wasn't very good at it, because I always seemed to get caught. I'm sorry, Mom and Dad, for those times (there weren't too many). Did I ever tell you the one about the night I had a carload of girls and was trying to get away from the carload of guys that wanted the carload of girls?
Posted at 23:39 on Sunday, December 30, 2007
It's been busy at the house the last couple days. I've invited over some people for a New Year's Eve picking party again this year, which means lots of cleaning and getting the basement up to snuff. It's been in need of this anyway, due to the mess left after our remodeling project wound down. Bob pointed out that this will be the 3rd New Year's Eve in a row we've gotten together, so how could we not do it?. The one in 2005 was in Burt, and what a hell of a party that was. We had one of the "ladies" trying to ride the mic stands (yes, that's what I meant to say). She showed up with this guy, and after a bit, he left. No one knew her, but that didn't slow her down at all. We were just waiting for Cheryl to do something when her mic stand started getting the treatment, but it didn't happen. I was happy too, because it was entertaining as hell to watch......Later on the guy that brought her came back and they left together. One of the fellows that had been cozying up to her just about cried when she took off. I'm sure he thought he was gonna get lucky, but that's the way these things go. As it is, he probably was lucky cause the guy showed up. I mean...she looked like trouble with a capital T.
Anyway, as I said, it was one hell of a party. The 2006 party was a good time too, and a lot more productive musically. No mic stand dancers, but we got a cd with about 20 tracks on it. Not all of them deserved to be saved, but I did anyway. I have to smile every time I listen to it, thinking about the evening, especially the last track, called "Bob crashes for the night". It involved a dog bowl and unintended contact with the floor. Perhaps I'll post it sometime.
Speaking of unintended contact with the floor, I found that I can't, or at least, shouldn't, drink tequila, especially the real good stuff, since it has the effect of putting me in a horizontal position when it's least expected. I lost count after 4 (or was it 5?) shots. I just sort of lost the will to stand, and there wasn't anything to do except fall down, which I managed to do quite nicely, thank you very much. No permanent damage, thankfully. I explained it by saying I tripped over a worm.....
Posted at 0:35 on Sunday, December 30, 2007
I recently found a add-on to Firefox that allows you to download flash videos from sites like YouTube and JibJab. I also found a Flash video player called FLV Player that acts as a standalone flash player, so all those funny videos that you like so much can be saved and viewed at your convenience. It's quite handy, and works as advertised. I'm busy filling up a spare hard drive with the best videos I've found so far. Most of YouTube is garbage, but there are some diamonds in there as well. JibJab has a bit higher signal-to-noise, but truly funny stuff is still hard to find.
Firefox has many useful add-ons; it's well worth your time looking at which ones might help fill a need you have. For example, I've been using NoScript and AdBlock since I first heard of them. There's also a developer's toolbar that WILL help you build and debug web pages, and the download status bar and download helper add-ons are both excellent tools. Do yourself a favor and check them out.
Posted at 6:08 on Thursday, October 11, 2007
I'm sitting here trying desperately to think of something to say. You'd think it should be easy, since it's been ALMOST A YEAR AND A HALF since I made an entry here. There's certainly lots of things to catch up on, such as Jon and Kimberly's new son Trenton, and Gabrielle's marriage and pregnancy. I don't know if a name has been chosen, but this will be grandchild number eight, supposedly a girl. That would make it seven girls, one boy.
Gabrielle asked me at one point "How many grandchildren do you need in Texas before you'd move"? Of course, she won't be in Texas once Tom gets back from Bagdad, so it's a moot point. At this point in my life, picking up and moving, starting over again somewhere, isn't something I would willingly do. Of course, if the economic situation in Michigan doesn't improve, that may be easier than I thought.
The remodeling project is coming along, although slower than I'd hoped. We're hoping to get most of the rest of the siding on by the end of this weekend, but the rain is slowing it down a bit. All the windows are done, but I still need to work on closing in the entrance to the addition. Kevin's done a good job so far, and except for the weather lately, has made good progress with the siding. We had something happen last weekend that put a damper on things, that's for sure. Lindsey, Kevin, the kids, and the dogs were over and everyone was outside, working, playing or otherwise occupied. Jack (the 5 month-old Jack Russell terrier) had wandered off, but no one really noticed. The sun had just set so it was starting to get dark, and Lindsey, noticing that Jack wasn't nearby, started looking for him. She saw he was in the middle of the road and yelled for him. I was up with Kevin on the backhoe bucket, helping to mount some plywood, and looked up to see him in the road just before the truck hit him (insert tears here). It was a terrible moment, and one I relived over and over during the rest of the weekend. Laini saw it happen as well, and the next few days were quite painful for everyone. He was such a character, and will be sorely missed.
Our pets become such a part of our lives. We've had three dogs hit on the road in front of the house now, and it's so hard to deal with when that happens. I don't regret for one second spending the money to buy the shock collar that Loki wears, and if there are objections from people (there have been a few) I let them know very quickly that it's because we love our dog that we have him wear it. I really don't care if others approve. It's the best $300 I ever spent.
Posted at 22:43 on Thursday, May 4, 2006
Having a five year old grandchild can be such a wonderful experience. Last Saturday Laini and Sara were at my house, and while Sara was napping, Laini and I were outside. We were checking out the chickens and she told me that "you can tell which ones are hens because the red thing lays down (the comb). The rooster's sticks up. Dale (a family friend) told me." "Well, Laini, I'm happy you told me that. I never was quite sure." Laini said "You should tell Grandma so she'll know too." I suggested to her that she should tell Grandma herself because I'm always telling Grandma stuff. A little later she asked me "Poppa, do you know much about farming?" "Not much" I had to admit. "Well, if you need to know anything you can ask me. Mom will tell me and I'll tell you." She sounded so serious, and right after, said "Mom says I'm learning responsibility." She reminds me so much of Lindsey at that age, it's almost like I have a chance to make up for lost time when she was young. At least that's what I'm telling myself.
Playing music has taken on a life of it's own. Some of the picking friends I've made wanted to start a band, so I've gotten involved with that. We've been picking like crazy the last 5 or 6 weeks trying to get ready for a benefit show that happened last night. It went well, all things considered. At least we can back off practice for a while. Three nights a week gets old real quick, and I'm ready to start doing a little recreational picking again, that is, once I get rid of this cold I've picked up. I feel like crap right now, so it may be a few days until I'm back to normal. It's funny, because all this advice I've been handing out, you know "Don't apologize on stage", "Don't let someone else's mistake throw you off", "Watch the facial expressions" get forgotten in the heat of battle. I actually apologized twice last night after mentioning repeatedly to Steph (the queen of apologies) to avoid doing that. It's enough to piss you off.
We're still waiting to hear when Jon gets to come home. It's kind of annoying, but it must be really annoying for him. Lost records should be a thing of the past by now, but apparently not. Gabrielle started her training, finally, and will hopefully be happier with her situation. Camping season is almost upon us, and there's some discussion about going next weekend. Track is in full swing, although I've missed several meets due to other obligations, and it looks like tomorrow will be another no-show for me. Such is life....
Posted at 18:12 on Saturday, March 11, 2006
Lots to report. Gabi is in Arizona waiting to start school. Jon's married now and in Texas at Air Force advanced training. Nathan's daughter is doing well, and photos are in the Gallery section.
I was thinking recently about my first memories. I can remember looking up at my father while we were both in the bathroom. I remember being very sad one day because I missed my father so much and longed to see him. I remember sticking a fork in an electrical socket, which started my lifelong fascination with all things electrical. I remember stepping into a picnic basket onto loaves of bread (that didn't go over well at all). I remember my father taking me fishing once. We caught these little sunfish (I think). I remember riding in a car with several of my aunts once, and saying that going up and down the hills makes my "peepee tickle".
Not much else to say right now. Sometimes I'm so uninspired.......
Posted at 23:25 on Tuesday, November 29, 2005
We now officially have two children in the military. Jonathan left for Air Force basic training on Monday, and Gabi gets done with Army basic training this Saturday. It's impossible not to be concerned about their safety, but as adults, the decision was theirs to make. I'm happy that they are both taking steps to do something real with their lives, and as both Rose and I were in the military (she in the Army, and oddly enough, I in the Air Force), we find it difficult to be too critical of their choices. It's not even that different, as we both enlisted while the Vietnam War was still going on. Still, the mess in Iraq is enough to concern any parent whose children are entering the military. George Bush has gotten us into a situation we can't possibly win, and I think the decision to overthrow Saddam was made very early in his presidency. I hate the fact that I voted for him, but the position on abortion the Democratic party espouses makes it impossible for me to support them. I can't simply sit out the elections, so there you are.
The annual Thanksgiving trip to Kentucky was very nice this year, for the most part. Lindsey and her daughters came with us, which made the trip a lot more fun for me. Ronnie and I knew that Rachel, Taylor, and Justin were coming from Texas, but no one else did, so that was kind of neat to see the reaction when they walked in the door. On the way, we made a stop in Grand Rapids to see Neal and his family. They were visiting for a 50th anniversary party, so the trip was very special, because we were able to see all of the grandchildren for at least a day or two. I got to spend some time with my sister and her (relatively) new family, and enjoyed that very much. The last night we were there, Bill, Bret, and I played guitars for a bit. We all encouraged Tawny to play the guitar, so she did, at least for a few minutes. Bret is quite good, so I hope he continues to play and improve. Hopefully he'll get over this idea that he can't sing. The family reunion was pretty good, and I was able to see some people for the first time in many years.
What?! 12:25??? Crap, I gotta work tomorrow. More later.....
Posted at 6:32 on Tuesday, October 4, 2005
WHAT A WEEKEND!!! We drove to Lansing, where I got to pick out a new mandolin, drove to Sterling Heights to drop off Rose, Ronnie, and Tara, drove to Blanchard to visit Nathan & Alex and pick with Milo, Al, and Dave. Saturday it's back in the car to Birch Run and my long-anticipated visit to Bob's place. After a tour we hopped in the car and were off to Otisville to pick with Ken and Buzz. It was a typical session, and we got back to Bob's around 4 am. Up at 8, eat breakfast, go to Sterling Heights, pick up the girls, head home. We got back around 8 o'clock Sunday.
The biggest thing for me, of course, is my new mandolin. It's a Michael Kelly, not the top of the line, but pretty close. I played a $5,000 Gibson mandolin just for comparison. My M.K. didn't look, play or sound as good, but it is close in every respect. Good workmanship, low action, and a nice round sound. I'm pleased with my choice and would recommend the line to anyone looking for a good mid-priced mandolin. Elderly's is such a cool place, and worth a visit to Lansing just for the experience. Walls full of guitars, banjos, mandolins, violins, etc. Vintage instruments mixed in with new instruments, all waiting to be played, and no one will mind (unless you abuse them). I was able to find my ideal guitar (Martin HD-28) and play it for a while. An altogether satisfying experience. I wanna go back.
I haven't spoken with Gabrielle yet. I know she's ok, but it would still be nice to speak with her. You know, little questions...How's the food? Stuff like that. I doubt we'll be able to go there for her graduation from basic training, but I'm thinking that's not really expected anyway. It would be nice to know what job she's going to get, but we'll have to wait for that too. Hey, Gabi. Give us a call sometime, OK?
We're about halfway through the girl's basketball season. The JV team is having a good season, winning most of their games. Ronnie is a starter and seems to be having a great time playing this year, other than the scratches and bruises that mysteriously appear after the games are over. Some of those girls play rough! She landed hard on the floor during the last game and ended up with a bruised hip. It's a little worrisome at times, but basketball is a relatively safe sport.
During the picking session with Bob, he got the urge to call Stephanie (at 2:30) and have her sing a song with us. It was so funny listening to their conversation. The whole night was a blast. We're fixin to do it all again, this time Steph will be there, since we're picking at her house. Buzz and Ken won't make it, but Tim, the Baitshop Boys, Rudy, Jennifer, Gilbilly, Tom, and who knows who else might show up. So Saturday at 2:00 it's off to the ice cream store in Pickford for a session, and then around 5:30 heading to the Soo to pick with the others. It sounds like a plan.....
Posted at 21:05 on Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Wheatland Music Festival happened again last weekend, and I had a blast. The weather was perfect, and having the camper along was a good decision since I didn't have to deal with the fermenting porta-johns. I had extra room in the camper, so I was asked to watch a little girl whose mom was working as a volunteer on the night shift. She is a sweetheart, and reminds me so much of Laini. She woke me about 6 am and cried a bit, but went back to sleep soon after.
The Partly Brothers played every night, so there wasn't as much picking as I had hoped, but I made up for it at some other campsites. Playing the mandolin with Al, Milo, and Dave1 was a bit of a challenge, and I was able to demonstate my technique of wandering about the neck trying to find some notes that fit. It was pretty funny at times. The food was good, the ribs were excellent, the music was abundant, and the beer was cold. What more could you possibly ask for? I'm sure it's safe to say that a good time was had by all.
I was able to stop by and see Nathan and Alex's house. It's a nice little place and should suit them very well. Alex is handling the pregnancy very well and Nathan is so excited by the new baby coming. He has suffered no ill effects as a result of the accident, seems to be settled in his job, and now has a house to tinker with. The next few years should be very interesting for them.
Gabi heads off to basic training today. I wish I had been there to see her off, but there was no way to do that. Talk about changes! Gabi, if you get a chance to read this, here's a way to get a great shine on your shoes: put a thick coat of polish on the leather and use a lighter to get it warm enough to flow a little (don't burn the leather). Rub it in with cotton balls until it shines shines shines. Of course, your mother got into trouble because the drill instructor thought she had used floor wax. I thought it was pretty funny, actually. Anyway, I wish her well, and offer this piece of advice: KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN!!!
Camping at the fair was good, with the exception of my trip to Ky. for Jeremy's funeral. That was hard, and my sister will be a long time recovering. There were so many people there, well over 500 that came to the wake (or "viewing") on Monday. He had many friends and will be missed by everyone that knew him. Tuesday, the day of the funeral, there was a downpour most of the day, until we went to the gravesite. The good part of the trip was spending time at Elaine's house and getting to know some of her crazy friends. I kept myself entertained on the trip down and back by singing along with the cd player. It's about 11 cds down and the same back. That's a trip I hope to not soon repeat.
My friends and I have been picking pretty often this summer. It's so much fun playing the mandolin with these folks. I've developed a real attraction with the older bluegrass and country and look for opportunities to play it. The Baitshop Boys are a local group that plays out and jams once a week on Sunday afternoon. We played a bit together at the shooting range last Saturday, and they invited me to join them whenever I could. They even have a web site - The Baitshop Boys. I think I'll take'em up on the offer.
Posted at 6:05 on Monday, August 15, 2005
It really has been 5 months since I made the last entry. Suffice it to say that this year has been quite busy. I have another granddaughter, Taylor, and she and Rachel lived here for the summer while Justin was working at camp. It was so nice to come home after work and get to see her and play with her. But she, her mother & father, and a big part of my heart just left for Texas on Saturday. I'm ok with them going; everybody's gotta be somewhere. I just wish they were a little closer so we could visit when we wanted to. 1500 miles is just too far to make a weekend visit worthwhile, though. As I was told, it's all the more reason to go to Texas for a visit.
Nathan and Alex are preparing to have their first child sometime around the end of the year. I hope they're ready. I think they are. It's such a life-changing event, though. I'm not sure anyone is really "ready" for children. You just hang on and do the best you can.
I had gone to the Sugar Island Music Fest this last weekend and had a great time there. I got up and played a few songs while Lise White and her group were getting set up. That wasn't a big deal. I didn't care whether I played on stage or not. I was there for the picking around the campfire after the stage shut down. Well, I wasn't disappointed. We played for several hours. A good part of that time I spent playing the upright bass. It's such a great instrument to play on, and Steph's bass is quite similar to the one I played in the bluegrass band 25 years ago. Jennifer has a Englehardt bass that is a wonderful instrument as well. The neck has a great feel, and the action is excellent. I left around 2:45 am, and ended up getting home around 4 am. A few hours of sleep and we were to head south for the party on Saturday.
It seems Nathan called last night to tell us he had wrecked his car. He didn't go to the hospital Friday night but he did go Saturday morning. He has a mild concussion and a really nasty looking bruise on his neck, but otherwise he is fine. One of the lessons learned out of this is to always try and secure stuff in your trunk, or don't carry loose metal objects, especially when the rear seat folds down. He was carrying a small floor jack that ended up through the front windshield because it came through the rear seat. Yep, he was lucky. We all were.
So the party was fun. Milo and Marie did a great job with the party. They had even set up a stage. We played until around midnight. I'm officially a Partly Brother now (the name of their band). We'll get together at Wheatland again this year. Something to look forward to.
A few of the other highlights....Gabi is scheduled to go in the Army in September, and Jonathan is talking with the Air Force recruiter. I'm a bit nervous about my children going in the military, but it's not my decision. We bought a 5th wheel, and have been doing more camping this summer. My studio is now usable, although it's not done. I really like having someplace to go when I want to practice that won't disturb anyone.
Lot's more, but no time.....
Posted at 9:31 on Sunday, March 13, 2005
Not long ago I realized my old Fender amp had gone missing. The last time it was used was at a friend's house, so I called and found out that, sure enough, it had been left there. Better than that, it no longer worked. Since it's at least 30 years old, I'm sure age is what did the dirty deed. When I looked at it, I found the main filter cap burnt up and a couple other components as well. Crap! Looking around at new amps was fun, but a new all tube amp isn't cheap, and I won't consider solid state. So off to the web to look for repair parts. There are several choices for rebuild kits for a Princeton Reverb, so I was able to compare notes from one site to another. Torres Engineering has a good selection of kits and a custom bias kit available for the Princeton Reverb amp, so they got the order. More than I wanted to spend for sure, but I should have a sweet amplifier at the end of the process. I plan to start the rebuild today.
Today is also the baby shower for Rachel. I guess it's a tradition, but I'm gonna be hiding while it's taking place. Lindsey's been doing the Lion's share of the work, since Rose's back is really bothering her these days. I hope they have fun.....
Sara is so funny these days. She's right on the cusp of intelligible speech. Laini is creating new words and phrases on a daily basis, such as wondering what a "piling cabinet" was, or telling her mom that she was being "annoring". I can't help but wonder what great stuff I'm missing because Charlotte and Sofia live so far away. We'll get to see them at the end of the month. I'm sure not looking forward to the drive, but that's the price of admission. I can hear her now;"Maybe we can stop at Graceland again". Sorry dear, I don't think so. Elvis has left the building and he's not coming back.
Posted at 16:59 on Monday, January 31, 2005
I received a nasty shock when I checked my credit card statement on-line last night. I noticed a charge from my telephone company of $762 dollars for the December billing (it was posted on Jan 25th). Holy shit!!!! How'd that happen? Did my dialer get hijacked? Nope, because I use IPCop for the proxy server. It's not subject to that kind of attack. As I looked at my setup, I noticed that the number being dialed was a Sault Ste. Marie number. But since it's now a 'local' number, what difference does that make? Well, as I found out today, that only applies to the first 2000 minutes. After that it's $.03 a minute, and for December there were over 24,000 minutes used. Not only that, it's been that way the whole of January, so altogether, I've gotten almost $1500 in charges calling what I thought was a local number. Of course, they claim that all their customers were informed of the change, but the people I asked today were clueless regarding this little gotcha.
Nowhere on the bill is a mention of the 2000 minute limit, and so I'm going to fight it, but I'm concerned about it, no question there. I can think of several things to say to them...I specifically had the line set up with no long distance when I ordered it, and for two and 1/2 years there have been no problems, but I'm told that calls to the Soo are not long-distance anymore. So why am I getting charged then? The people I spoke with were nice enough, but I have to wait until someone calls me back, a process that could take up to a month. Why wasn't I alerted to the change in the usage by the telephone company? Why in Hell should they care, since it is revenue to them, and who gives a crap what it does to their customers. Their defense was 'It was what the Public Service Commision and the company agreed to'. I didn't agree to it!! There needs to be a method set up so that when usage patterns change dramatically, the customer is notified by e-mail, telephone call, or some other positive method.
So, kids, if you're reading this, don't call home about it....I'm still trying to figure out a way to tell your mother.......
Posted at 6:38 on Tuesday, January 25, 2005
My studio project is proceeding slowly. I did manage to get the computer room in some reasonable order, though. It's so much more open than the old space, even though the room is two feet shorter.
With the new insulation, vapor barrier, and drywall, lots of small air leaks are gone, so when it's done the basement should be a bit warmer in the winter. Laini also gets a great hiding spot out of it.
She's already got it furnished with a blanket, pillow, and a box of toys her mom dug out from the storage room.
Of course, the big news is about the accident last Wednesday. I was heading to work, about 1/2 mile north of Main Street in Pickford, going about 40 mph (speed limit is 55). I noticed a car a few hundred feet in front of me with his brake lights on waiting to turn left. I pressed on the brake pedal and immediately went into a slide. Once the left front tire hit the icy snowbank, my Jeep flipped right over. I managed to get unhooked, turn the engine off, open the door, and crawl out within about 30 seconds. Amazingly enough, I wasn't hurt, just a little sore. There's no exaggeration in the reports of how easy SUVs are to roll. I didn't think I was going fast enough to roll it, but that's what happened. Perhaps I hit the brakes too hard. Or not. It doesn't matter now, I guess.
One of the more annoying aspects of this whole affair is that the state trooper issued a ticket for 'Failure to use due caution and care'. He told me 'the road is never at fault'. What? In other words, weather is never a factor. Tell that to the people involved in the 200 car pileup near Lansing. Is that what they're teaching our state police these days? Well, I wrote a letter to the local magistrate and asked that the ticket be invalidated. I hope that happens.
Winter drags on. It has been pretty cold the last few weeks. Yesterday wasn't quite as cold, and a good thing too, since Loki and I were locked out of the house for about 4 hours. I got back to the house about 2 pm yesterday and decided to clear the driveway and walkways of drifted snow. After changing clothes, I went out to get started, and brought Loki outside so he could relieve himself. When I tried to get back in, I found that the doors were all locked, and the keys were inside. I cleared the snow, and spent the next 3 hours sitting in the car, Loki and I trying to keep each other warm, and trying not to get upset, since it was my own stupidity that got me there. I was almost successful. Along about 6 pm the rest of the family showed up, had a good laugh, and I went inside to get warm. I'm so happy they could see the humor in this......
Posted at 7:13 on Saturday, January 8, 2005
I'm off on my latest project....to convert an underused storage room into a recording space. Of course, in order to do that I need to move all the "stuff" that's in there right now. Next it's build a floor, followed by some walls, electrical, soundproofing, etc. I've got about 130 square feet to work with, so I should be able to come up with a nice little music room. There have been so many times in the past 18 months that I wanted to set up my recording equipment again, but I haven't had a good place to do it. I expect I'm at least a month away from actually hooking things up, but the project is on it's way.
Speaking of projects.....the latest project was widening the stairs. Since we moved in here, we've had continual problems with people slipping on the stairs. I finally got the motivation (thanks, Rose) and time to do something about it. Each stair is one and a half inches wider now, with new carpet laid by my friend Fran. The first day was spent widening each stair, but I ran out of time before starting on the bottom step. It was a bit of a dilemma because the first step was about 13 inches high, which would create real problems getting on and off the stairs. A little thought produced this temporary fix:
I always knew that old computer would be useful for something. Here's the completed project, minus the baseboard:
Yesterday was my first day with glasses. I don't care for them, but the world looks a little sharper when they're on. The big surprise in all this is that I can see better without them when working on the computer. For closeup and distance, they seem to help, but for distance of 2-3 feet, my unaided eyes still work best. At least I can read the liner notes on cds again.
Posted at 21:31 on Sunday, December 5, 2004
We got our first real snowfall of 2004 last night. 6-8" of the white stuff, and more to come. It's been no secret over the years that I hate snow and get depressed when it happens. For the last 15 years I've used a snow scoop to clear paths around the house but recently decided I'd had enough, so I bought a used snow blower. Today was the day I decided to head into the Sault to pick up my newest toy, er, tool.
After unloading the fuel tank (that's another story) I was driving my pickup truck and needed some air in one of the tires, so I headed to Skinner's. As I was coming to a stop sign, I pressed on the brakes, and felt something kind of "pop". The brake pedal proceeded to the floor with no sign of slowing the truck down. Fortunately I wasn't going too fast and was able to slow down by downshifting. I wasn't able to stop at the intersection, but did slow down enough to avoid going out in the intersection by turning sharply to the right and hitting a snow bank. I managed to limp it home and park the truck without running into the garage. So here I am with a broken truck and the snow to thank, at least in part, for not driving into an intersection and possibly causing a traffic accident. Talk about conflicted!
Posted at 20:24 on Tuesday, November 30, 2004
It's been over two months since the last entry. Lot's of reasons for it, none very good. Since the last entry, we've made a trip to Kentucky, sold the old property, moved the site to a new hosting service, learned that I have two more grandchildren coming, bought a new camera, completed a computer upgrade, and wrote and sold a major best-seller (just kidding on that one).
Timing is everything. It was never so apparent to me as the day Rose and I were at the laundomat shortly after we were married. We were busy carrying several baskets of dirty clothes to the washing machines and had just passed one another in the middle of the room. Fortunately, neither of us paused for a PDOA (public display of affection). Suddenly the wall exploded, throwing broken concrete blocks all around the room, with most of the debris landing right where we had passed not 5 seconds before. What happened was that a lady driving by had lost control, jumped the curb, and buried the front end of her car in the wall we so narrowly escaped getting buried by. She had some kind of problem, a heart attack, a stroke, or whatever. I never found out for sure. She was unconcious when we went outside, and an ambulance had to be called to get her to the hospital. Timing.....if we had stopped or even slowed down as we passed they would have been digging us out from beneath that wall. I think about that day whenever I drive by that building.
I finally managed to replace my aging Sony Mavica FD-91 with a new Minolta Dimage A2. I'm still getting used to the settings and how to interpret the display, but it's a pleasure to use so far. I'm starting to experiment with some of the neater features like exposure bracketing. While we were in Kentucky for Thanksgiving I went out on a clear night to play with it and managed to get some pretty decent shots of the night sky and the moon. I've put a couple of them in the photo album, along with a picture of a rare Gibson Les Paul that my sister's new husband happens to own. Man, what a sweet guitar. Bill seems to be a good guy, and I look forward to hanging out with them the next time I make it to Hawesville.
I'm still picking up the pieces from the move to a new hosting service, but Blue Domino pissed me off one too many times. Here's hoping I can get the RSS page working properly again soon, because that was my favorite spot on the site. Something about the cache file......
Posted at 7:18 on Saturday, September 25, 2004
Pickford beat Brimley last night (football). We expected it to be a tough game, and it was until the last 5 minutes, when Brimley seemed to just collapse. The score was 8-2 going into the 4th quarter, which made for an exciting evening. Within 6 minutes, Pickford scored 3 times and it was over for sure. It sure was fun to watch for a while though. Jon played a good game and got a couple pretty impressive tackles. We actually got to bring Laini along for the game. Not only that, she was able to stay at the house last night. That's been a rare occurance, and one I would like to have happen more. It's not our call, though, so we'll take it when we can.
The Wheatland festival was excellent...beautiful weather, excellent music, good food, and a view you couldn't beat (we were near the showers). The main problem I had was with my foot hurting, so I didn't walk around as much as I would have liked to. The area is pretty big, with half-a-dozen separate campgrounds, and at least that many activity areas. Workshops, how-tos, demonstrations, and 3 or 4 performance areas all added up to one hell of a lot of activity. I had thought about trying the open mic sessions, but it didn't work out. It didn't matter though, because I was having a good time at the campsite, so what do I need an open mic session for? Besides that, my foot hurt, and I didn't want to walk up there again.
Al (guitar player in the band) and I sat up till 2:30 Saturday morning, watching the parade go by. He's a funny guy, and kept me entertained most of the weekend. We were near Lost World (each campsite has it's own personality, and Lost World is well-named). From time to time as the night wore on, one of the camps would start making a lot of noise which was picked up by a camp nearby and so on. The effect was very much like a wave. It was still pretty noisy when I went to bed, but it's all part of the experience, you know? Then Saturday came bright and early, and we started picking about 1 pm. On and off (mostly on) for the next 14 hours. I finally packed mine away about 3:30 Sunday morning. There was a small but appreciative audience, and I got to pull out some old and dear songs. It was great. I wanna do it again next year.
Last weekend my brother Larry came to visit. I was quite surprised when I found he actually was coming, since it had been discussed for many years, but hadn't happened. We played tourist, and Rose had a dinner for him Sunday. Monday we left early, went to Canada (to the casino), Whitefish Point, Marquette, and then to Gwinn to drop him at the motel. It was a nice visit and I'm glad he came. Too bad he couldn't stay longer. Next time bring Nanhee along, ok?
I'm going to take another shot at my balky computer downstairs. The disk error has just about got me stumped, but, the Windows XP class I just finished gave me the chance to ask a few questions regarding this problem so, armed with some new ideas, I'm on my way to try again. Wish me luck.
Posted at 10:33 on Monday, September 6, 2004
We're home from the fair now...8 whole days of non-stop fun. There were a few moments, such as yesterday morning when the water pressure dropped to somewhere in the neighborhood of 0 psi. It seems a water line had broken near the horse barns, and water had to be shut off for a while. A minor inconvenience in what was otherwise a pretty enjoyable week. A little rain, few biting insects, spending quality time with my guitar AND grandchildren. All in all, it's been a good week. Next weekend is the Wheatland Festival. Nathan and Alex will be there, as well as Alex parents. Milo (Alex's father) plays bass guitar in a band, so I expect he will have an instrument along. There's also an open mic session on Friday and Saturday night that I plan to try. Only two songs, though, so I would probably do "Warts and All" and "Shadows of the Past". It should be fun. It will certainly be the last blast of the summer, so let's make sure it's a good one!
Football is in full swing, with games every Friday for a while...ditto for basketball, except those are twice a week. Basketball season is a bit like track, except longer. We look forward to it, waiting excitedly for the season to start, and then before too long, wait excitedly for it to end. I love watching track; it's my favorite school sport. We've had some very good athletes in our family, with Rose's gene contribution being the primary reason for that (her father was an excellent runner). All my children have participated in track at Pickford. They've had varying levels of success, but all put in a great deal of effort and are better people for the experience. Veronica is the only girl that's stuck with basketball, and by the way things look, she will be a good addition to the team as she moves through high school. I have some film of her in the 5th grade, and even then could tell she would be a good basketball player. It remains to be seen how far she takes it.
The pig is gone now, sold at auction on Saturday. Ronnie received $2.60 a pound on the hoof, which is better than I thought she might get. It was my first time to the auction, and was interested in exactly how it worked. The auctioneer sat in a high chair and "sang" out the bid, and the bid spotters would shout out when a bid was placed. It seemed to work pretty well, except when the animals were a little balky. Laini asked me "Is that a song, Poppa?" when she heard the auctioneeer start the bidding. "Well, it's the auctioneer's song" was my response. She danced for a while and then we went for a walk to find Ronnie, who seemed a bit nervous about how it would go. I think she had visions of not getting a good price for her pig, but that went well. It's a great compliment to the local businesses in our area that they support the 4-H club auctions so generously. A cage of 3 or 4 chickens were selling for over $100, amazingly enough. The Grand Champion steer Was over $3.00 a pound, (all 1200 pounds of him) and the reserve Grand Champion was almost $4.00 a pound (1400 lbs). That's a lot of money! But, it's all for the kids, right?
Work on the site has dropped off a bit, what with all the other stuff going on in the last month. I added a thumbnail slide show to the home page, and got the calendar working again. Next project is to get some new pictures in the album. I have quite a few that Neal has sent, and more that I've taken. I'll be sure to work on that, I promise. I plan to get the "sort by date" option working again, which died when the site was migrated to a new server. It's an interesting technique, and perhaps when it's working again I'll write an article about how it works.
Posted at 22:50 on Tuesday, August 3, 2004
It was a bit of a whirlwind weekend. Friday night it was off to St. Paul, Mn. to pick up Jonathan. We drove through the night and arrived around 9am. Since he was busy until 10:30pm, we were able to visit the Cathedral of Conspicuous Consumption, otherwise known as the Mall of America. It's huge, and has some stores that you have to see to believe. There's a store called "The Endangered Species Store". I wanted to add a sign that said "Get your skins before they're gone!" but it seemed like it might be in poor taste. Then there's the "Video Buddy Store". They had three walls full of the Video Buddy. Must be a popular thing, whatever it is. There were doughnuts as big as a Frisbee (the "Paul Bunyan"), an amusement park inside, and Ashley Simpson, live on-stage(???). It had it all!!!!!
So after wearing my knees and feet out, we ate lunch at Ruby Tuesday's, where I had the absolute best broccoli I've ever had. It was perfect, tender yet firm, beautiful color, and a flavor that was just...perfect. I could be a commercial for them. And the buffalo strips...ummmm. After that it was back at it in an attempt to at least see all the stores. It didn't work, by the way. I missed one whole level, unfortunately it was the level that Hooters was on. We left the mall, found the University of St. Thomas, where Jon was at, and hung around there for a while. We eventually found a shady place to park, and managed to get in a nap. Did you know that Minnesota's cigarette tax is so low, you can buy two packs for about a quarter more than one pack in Michigan. I think I see a business opportunity in the making:-)
While worshipping at the Cathedral, I had a chance to play with a Nikon D70. What a great camera! 6.1MP, 3.2 fps, external flash, interchangable lens, exposure times from over one second to 1/8000. I almost bought it, but came back to reality before it was too late. Too bad.
Anyway, after picking up Jon, it was off to Lansing to drop him at the Mi. State Police academy for the week. We made it with an hour to spare. We were one of the first to arrive, and Jonathan was in the first group of five. The letter he received had very specific instructions about how he should be dressed when arriving: blue jeans, t-shirt (tucked in), belt, tennis shoes, no jewelry, watches, cell phones, snacks, etc, etc, etc. Most of the kids got yelled at because of shirts not being tucked in, jewelry, sunglasses, and hats, but Jonathan won the prize. He showed up wearing the wrong shirt, the wrong pants, the wrong shoes, but at least he wasn't wearing sunglasses. I'm sure the point of the very specific instructions on how to dress for check-in was a test to see who was paying attention. Jon's mantra of "what's the big deal" will be challenged this week. At least I hope so.
Posted at 10:12 on Sunday, July 25, 2004
It's been a quiet week in Lake WoeBeGone....oh, sorry. That's Garrison's line. It has been a good week though, with Neal and his family visiting. I decided to take the whole week off (except Monday) and have been puttering around the house, doing little things, and enjoying the visit mostly. I even got over to the property and did some fairly extensive clearing, complete with a bonfire, a few nights ago. Of course, without Kevin's help (his tractor and bushog) I wouldn't have gotten nearly as much done. As it is, the area that's been cleared is about what we used to keep mowed when we lived there. I really miss it over there and keep having these recurring thoughts of building a house and moving back. I kind of hate the thought of starting over though. We're so close to being mortgage-free that it just doesn't make sense to start again. It deserves some thought.
The bonfire I mentioned was a nice evening. Everyone except Jon was there, and we sat around and reminisced about earlier times and events. I ended up staying until about 1 a.m. (had to make sure the fire was really dead). It would have been better if I hadn't broken a string on my guitar about 11:30, but that's sometimes the way it goes. The next hour and a half consisted of poking and prodding the fire, petting the dog, and thinking about all sorts of things. Surprisingly, I noticed almost no mosquitos. It was wonderful.
Neal and Jaclyn are leaving today. I've certainly enjoyed getting to know Charlotte. She's loads of fun and loves to cuddle. By this time next year she'll have a brother or sister. That's when the fun really begins. There was some discussion about meeting in kentucky for Thanksgiving, which would be wonderful, but not certain at this point.
The redesign of my site is almost complete, with most of what's remaining on the invisible level (at least to the public). The majority of change has been with the home page by adjusting it to match the other pages, and adding the tagboard. I do miss the guitar graphics for the buttons, so the next little "project" will be to modify the nav bar for graphic buttons. I'm already excited about it.....
Posted at 17:52 on Friday, July 16, 2004
Where were you when the Challenger exploded? Some people view it as a pivotal moment in history. Like the JFK assasination, many people can tell you with uncommon clarity about the moment they heard of the event. I was on my way home after leaving work early that day, because of the swelling in my face from poison ivy exposure. We had apparently burned some wood laced with poison ivy (or poison oak, perhaps), with Neal and I getting the worst of it. Just as I got on I-75, the radio station interrupted the music to make the announcement of the accident. 9/11 had that same effect. You knew that this was a pivotal moment in history as well, and would never look at the world in quite the same way. The United States has enjoyed a long period of relative safety, at least from outside influences. These days, however, everything is at risk. Our water supply, our power grid, and many other systems we depend on to maintain our lifestyle are all potential targets. How long can it be before something else happens as dramatic and tragic as the World Trade Center attack? The world is becoming less safe by the day, it seems. I sometimes wonder how much longer it will all last.
Stargate has turned into a bit of an obsession with me the last year or so. I'm not sure why, the storylines are sometimes silly and far-fetched, but the idea of it is so cool I just have to watch. Friday night...Stargate night....gotta go.
Posted at 23:02 on Wednesday, July 14, 2004
There are times I have to wonder just what the hell is wrong with me....
Yesterday I went to Marquette to hear President Bush speak at a "pep rally". It's the first time in 94 years a sitting president has come to Marquette so there were lots of excited people all around, and all I could do is wonder when it was going to be over. There were some protesters too, few in number but noisy. The fact is I hate politics and all that goes with it, including big affairs like this one. I guess I would have been more excited about it if I believed that he was the person that should hold the office, but the only thing that makes me more nervous than George Bush being president is John Kerry being president. Or maybe Al Gore. Or Bill Clinton. The more I think about it, the more sense it makes to emulate my wife's approach. She decides who to vote for based on their position regarding abortion. Everything else is irrelevant. I'm usually not that black and white about things, but since most of what they say is bullshit anyway, it tends to cut through the crap.
I've started using version 0.9.2 of Firefox and really like it. Version 0.9.1 seemed to have a problem that caused pages to complete before they were rendered properly. Refreshing the page would usually fix it, but it was quite a pain. The current version seems to have that issue resolved, as well as blocking the shell exploit that was discovered a few days ago. In addition, there is a web developer plug-in that is proving to be pretty handy, and I've only begun figuring out all the stuff it can do. I highly recommend it.
I ordered the tickets today for the Wheatland Music Festival in September. It's a big affair, with 15,000 people attending last year. I also found out they have open mike times. If I get brave I might try it. Rose said something about singing with me. I'm not that brave.....
Posted at 10:04 on Sunday, July 11, 2004
Summer seems to have arrived. It was a beautiful, warm day yesterday. Not many of those so far this year, that's for sure. I should enjoy it while we have it, but usually end up doing inside things. I'll have to work on that. Yesterday was the ceiling in the living room. Repairing the ceiling after a section of it collapsed has been a long drawn-out job, not because it's been especially hard, I just haven't devoted much time to it. A few weeks ago the drywall went up, and a few days ago I put on the joint compound. I saw in a hardware store this stuff that claimed to cover over very rough surfaces and would have a finished surface similar to our current ceiling, so I bought it, hoping it would let me avoid putting on another layer of compound and feathering, sanding, etc. Well, it didn't cover well enough (false advertising..the shock), so now I have to do it properly anyway, except it's going to be harder now that the other stuff is there. To top it off, the clerk at the hardware store gave me the wrong color paint. I wanted white, but for some reason she gave me bright white. This little episode has reminded me of a couple of life's rules: Never ever assume the clerk knows what they are doing, and don't cut corners just because you don't feel like doing it right.
I finally caved in and set up a browser detection script on my site so a stylesheet can be applied based on the viewing browser. There are just too many subtle differences between IE and Mozilla (my main browser and what I use to test with) to keep fudging the code so they come out close to the same. I did discover that the doctype declaration really does need to be there. I had a page that looked funny in IE until I added the doctype declaration to the page (left off by accident). Oddly enough, it rendered just fine in Mozilla.
Sara is crawling all over the place now. It should be lots of fun watching her and Charlotte get to know each other when they are together next weekend.
Posted at 9:19 on Sunday, June 27, 2004
I saw a bear a few days ago on my way home from Jared's birthday party. I was on my bike and headed home when I noticed him off to my right, about 40 ft away and walking along as if he had an appointment to get to. For a fleeting moment I considered riding over to get a closer look. Fortunately, common sense kicked in and I watched from the road. This particular bear was a young one, just a bit bigger than Loki, but still would be in possession of a set of big teeth and several sharp claws (what's a drunken hillbilly's last words? 'Hey y'all, watch this'). I've not seen bear in the wild before, just the poor unfortunates that end up in zoos. The most cruel display I've ever seen was right here in the good ol' U.P. over around Christmas, Mi. There was this bear locked in a cage behind a bar. The cage he 'lived' in couldn't have been more than 200 sq feet total. I felt so terrible after seeing this. It would have been a kindness to put that poor animal out of his misery, since releasing him wasn't an option. I thought about that bear from time to time, but never stopped again, even though we passed by many times over the years. I heard he finally died some years ago. Thank God for that.
Neal and his family will be here soon, just a couple weeks now. It will be good to see them and the baby again. You can really see her father in her face. Getting Sara and Charlotte together should be fun. Hopefully the weather will be agreeable during their visit. I had thought about camping during the visit, but Neal didn't seem too interested in that. Oh well, we'll have to figure something else out.
I finally got the navbar working properly on the Flying Ball of Aluminum site I'm doing for Fran. I had used the CSS trick of changing backgrounds on a mouseover for the nav bar buttons, but IE and Mozilla displayed them differently. I ended up needing to detect the browser type and loading a different stylesheet for Mozilla than for IE. Last night I figured out how to vary the graphics for each button instead of all of them being the same. I'm not sure how I'll use that yet, but it's nice to know these techniques.
Posted at 8:07 on Sunday, June 13, 2004
Sunday morning must be my 'official' blogging time, since on average that's when it happens. Since I can't stay in bed once awake, I often will be up by 7 am. It gives me time when the house is quiet and thoughts come a bit easier. I also like getting up early, which turns out to be a big surprise. When I was younger, my mother could not get me out of bed, much like Jon is these days. In fact, there are so many similarities between he and I when a teenager it's kind of disquieting. Let's hope he learns more quickly than I did. Right now I have my doubts about that.
We had a visit from the MSP last night. Seems there was a complaint filed regarding an event that Jon happened to be at, so he was interviewed. We were told he wasn't in any trouble, but it's very disturbing to come home and find a state police car sitting in your driveway. I thought at first that he was going to tell me about an automobile accident (Rose was on the road yesterday). Thankfully, it was nothing as serious as that. Thinking about the event afterwards, I came to realize that we've managed to raise five children without having to deal with the legal system. I hope it continues for the other two, but you never know for sure. It's so much easier these days to attract official attention. I can recall an incident with a motorcycle that, if it happened today, would likely mean a visit to the county lockup (no license) instead of being told to take it home and not ride it again until properly licensed. In that case, I was absolutely responsible for the violation, but the local sherrif decided not to pursue it. In the current situation, Jon just happened to be there, and really didn't do anything wrong, other than the place and time. We've told him more than once to choose wisely when picking his friends. I hope he eventually listens to that advice.
I bought a bicycle yesterday. It's a 21-speed Schwinn 'mountain' bike. It was a lot less than I was prepared to pay, only $132.00. Of course by the time I added the replacement seat, bottle holder, rear-view mirror, and lock, it was closer to $180, but that's still less than what I was prepared to pay for the bike alone. Rose is interested in getting a new bike as well, so we might be able to go on some rides together. I hope so, and have been thinking of the possibility of overnight bike trips, riding to Lindsey's house, trips to Kentucky (just kidding about that one). I bought a bike in 1975, a real nice one, suitable for racing. I rode that thing everywhere. Back and forth to work, to visit friends, shopping, etc. I remember one evening I was peddling around Hawesville and saw a friend of mine in a car. He asked how fast I could make it go. At the time I didn't know, but of course we had to find out after that. I peddled my ass off getting up to speed, and he drove beside me in his car. I seem to remember him telling me we were going 'about 30 mph' at the fastest point. It's doubtful I could have kept up that pace for long, but that wasn't important at the time. In fact, it still isn't. Yesterday, on my inaugural ride, I was blazing along at what was probably no faster than 10 miles an hour. It was such a beautiful day despite being a bit cool, and there was no particular reason to be in a hurry. I'm hoping that is the first of many.
Posted at 11:18 on Sunday, June 6, 2004
Pickford Schools brought home another trophy last night. We went to the U.P. Finals to watch Jon and his team compete. Damned if they didn't win the meet. They beat Rapid River by 2 points. It's been 12 years since the Pickford boys last won U.P. Finals, so they were pretty excited. The girls didn't fare quite so well, as Rapid River won by 99 points (is that a record?). Three of the four years Gabi and Rachel were in H.S. track, their main competition at finals was Rapid River. Pickford won those meets, with the combined point spread for the three years at 10 points: 2.5, 2.5, and 5. Well, Ronnie and company will be there next year and should help make the team more competitive. I wanted to stay for the whole meet, but the 3200M runs (3 divisions, boys and girls, 2 hours scheduled) were just starting, Jon was done with his events, and we had a 4 hour drive to get home, so we left. A stop in Escanaba, and also at Lindsey's house, and we were home by 10 pm or so.
The funniest thing yesterday I saw happen was during the 400M relay. On the second handoff, the baton was passed, and apparently Curt didn't have a good grip on it, because he dropped it. I saw him slow down and reach for something, and then take off running full speed again. He had somehow caught the baton when it bounced. I got it on tape, and we watched it 3 or 4 times because I couldn't quite believe it. The best part was they still placed in that event.
Beautiful weather, no rain, and I had my hat. Quite a day, all in all.
Gabi made it to Marin's. She left on Thursday evening and stopped at Nathan's house for the night. She was getting ready to leave when she called Friday morning at 9:30, so I expected her to call Lindsey sometime Friday night or Saturday morning (we weren't home) to report the successful completion of her trip. Well, by Saturday morning, we had left 3 messages on the cell phone, woke up Lindsey and Kevin, tried several times to call Marin's, and gotten slightly frantic because we hadn't heard from her. During the track meet, Rose went on a mission to find a phone and make some calls. She was gone for what seemed like hours, which gave me lots of time to invent numerous nightmare scenes. I mean, surely if she found out Gabi was ok, she'd come right back to tell me, right? So if she's gone a long time that means she's still trying to get hold of someone, or she found out that the car had been found abandoned, and the police were on their way to the track to get me because someone found my wife collapsed by a pay phone..........See what I mean? The longer I waited for her, the more nuts I became. She eventually showed up and mentioned that Lindsey had heard from Gabi around noon (it's now 2:30). I asked her why she didn't come back right away to tell me. 'I went shopping'. SHOPPING!!! I was pretty annoyed, but let it go. At least Gabi is safe.
As Gabi was leaving Thursday evening, Laini pleaded to go with her 'I won't run away, I PROMISE! Please let me come with you!!!' It just about broke my heart. On Friday, as we were getting ready for our trip to Kingsford, Laini kept repeating 'I want to go on THE TRIP. I want to go on THE TRIP' as if it were some sort of mantra. We would have gladly taken her, but it wasn't likely her mom and dad would agree. I doubt I would have either if she were my child.
I've finally begun building a links database. I'm tired of modifying pages just to update links, so this should help. I probably should just convert over to one of the CMS systems available for PHP, but I'd really rather build my own. I learn more and it's simpler to maintain. Now all I need to do is figure out what I want.......
Posted at 9:47 on Tuesday, June 1, 2004
I saw "Shrek 2" last night....what a hoot! There's some truly funny scenes, some "been there, done that", and some jokes that don't work all that well. Overall, though, it's a funny, intelligent work. There's a little clip after the first set of credits that is quite funny, so make sure you stay for it. I don't often go to the theater, so it's always refreshing that a movie I pick to watch is actually worth watching.
I got to do a little target practice over the weekend. Rose ended up with Gene's 22 pistol. Since I was going to Salt Point for an overnighter, the pistol came along for the ride. We sat on the balcony and shot balloons, bocche balls, footballs, tables (Anthony gets credit for that), and trees. It was quite entertaining, almost addictive. I had to get the pistol out on Monday as well. I was determined to split at least one of those bocche balls, maybe both. I did hit it a number of times, but it was Tony that got the kill. He managed to split one of the balls, so the other is now sitting, all alone, waiting for us to come back and try again. I really like shooting Rose's pistol. It's easy to load and unload, has a nice balance to it, and is pretty accurate. It's also kind of neat to know that this pistol was probably one of Gene's most precious possessions. I'm sure he spent many hours firing, cleaning, and "playing" with it. Gloria reminded me that the last time her father shot it was on the beach at Salt Point in 2000. He had to be carried down and carried back, but it was a good day for him, I'm sure of that.
I'm home today (a normal workday) because this is my FDTHBTSB day (free day to help balance the state budget). It could have been worse (I could be looking for a job), but it still hurts a bit to have a forced day off. I wonder what the legislators had to give up.....nothing is my guess. When you write the rules, why would you write them to hurt yourself? Working for state government can be very positive. Dealing with the technology we use to run the networks has been a learning experience for me, and might become even more of a learning experience in the near future. The downside, however, is having so much dependency on tax revenues, public policy and politicians, the latest "grand idea" from Lansing, and the constant reorganization my department has been dealing with for the last 3 years, and which is likely to continue for another 5 years or more. Most people I deal with are trying to keep a positive attitude about it, but there is a possibility that our duties will be contracted out. There's also a possibility we will be absorbed back into our original departments, but that's not likely at this point. Going back to Corrections wouldn't be such a bad thing in my view. I'm not alone, by the way.
Laini and Sara should be here any minute. While Gabi is home these few days, she's trying to spend as much time as possible with them, and who can blame her? Once she leaves for her new position, I'm sure it will be quite some time before she returns home. It's a good thing to see your children go out and start trying to make their way in the world, but it's hard at the same time. It makes it even harder when you just know they don't have a clue about what it takes to be independent (it's not necessarily Gabi I'm referring to). That's something almost everyone eventually figures out.
Posted at 9:04 on Sunday, May 23, 2004
Rachel called a few days ago and told me how unhappy she was. It seems there's more to being a nanny than watching children. That's no surprise to me...there has to be some housekeeping, food prep, laundry, etc. I'm sure it was no surprise to Rachel either. For the woman Rachel worked for, however, it was carried to an extreme. Rachel told me she was made to iron "nightshirts". Iron pajamas, for Chrissakes?!?! When I dropped her off, I had an uncomfortable feeling about this family, and it was little surprise that it ended the way it did. Oh, I didn't mention that? Allow me to digress.....
It seems Rachel had been trying to talk to the mother for at least a couple days to let her know it wasn't working out. She was planning to let them know that she wasn't the right person for them, that she was too close to the children's age to be an effective supervisor, especially since there didn't seem to be a lot of control from the parents. I even saw that in the short time I was there, the evening we dropped her off. There was this little thing with a cd player that showed me the parents didn't have good control of the boy (the youngest). According to Rachel, it's the kids that run the house. After being avoided for a couple days, Rachel finally cornered the mother, and told her they had something important to discuss. Again, according to Rachel, at that point, she was told "No we don't, because you're fired". Rachel called her friend, packed her stuff, and got the hell out of there. She understands now why there have been 16 or so nannys in the last nine years (according to the mother).
It's disappointing that things didn't work out. I want to see her succeed at something. It's pretty common these days for young people to drift from one thing to another, not having a clue what they should be working toward, and I can see Rachel is part of that group. She wants to give this Nanny thing another try, but in a situation she is better able to handle. I wish her luck.....
I'm in the middle of an upgrade to my main system right now. I found this ASUS motherboard, the A7N8X-E that seemed to be all that, and then some. It was $95 bucks from M-Wave, where I usually buy components. I bought a AMD 2400+ processor as an upgrade last year but was unable to use it since the system became unstable after replacing just the processor. The ASUS motherboard will handle up to a 3200+, so I can wait until the price of those come down and pop one in eventually. The motherboard seems to be a solid piece of work. It's got everything but a coffeemaker interface...SATA, IEEE1394 (firewire), 5.1 surround sound, AGP8X, dual lan ports (gigabit), and what appears to be a full suite of media creation tools (WinDVD).
The only problems I've had so far were ones that I created, mainly because I was trying to upgrade without redoing the boot disk. My video capture card (ATI Radeon) seems to be fairly picky about how the software is installed and then upgraded. There are 8 or so entries in device manager for the components on the card, and unless it's done correctly, all 8 will turn into unknown devices after upgrading the control panel software. That's my only complaint about the card, other than the 800X600 resolution limit if you want to use the TV out. It does a nice job of capturing, though, which is the reason I bought the thing to begin with. If the upgrade gives me enough horsepower, I plan to start capturing in a compressed format, instead of uncompressed AVI. Them files are SOOOOO BIG. 2 hours of uncompressed video will fill up the 230GB disk array with a little to spare.
well, I gotta go check on my disk format (60 GB takes a while to format no matter what you have it connected to)....
Posted at 9:47 on Sunday, May 16, 2004
Dear Diary,
Time to play catch-up. It's been weeks and weeks since I last wrote you. Hard to believe until I think about all the stuff that's going on.
Track is going full-tilt. With both High School and Junior High, the average is three meets a week. Sometimes more. That's going to decrease though, since the last Junior High meet is next Thursday. Veronica had a meet yesterday, and did very well. She was so excited after running the 200 meter and coming in 3rd. 'I cut 3 seconds off my time, and I beat that Ellsworth girl'. Ronnie lost to her in the 100M at Ellsworth, so it was a big thing. Her relay races were good too, except a couple handoffs slowed them down a bit. Ronnie's a great kid. I'm quite proud of her.
I love track. It's so much fun to get out and watch the kids run, throw, jump, etc. It's always a plus when the weather is good. Lately the weather hasn't cooperated too much. Well, after all, it's only the middle of May, right? It's a relief when the season's over, as well, because of the number of meets so close together. They have to do the whole season in seven weeks, so they have to be close together. It's hard on team supporters, but it's harder on the kids. The end is in sight, since Ronnie just has 4 more years, but by then Laini will be in school, so I guess it never really ends, does it?
Right after the meet, we went to the Rye's farm and got a pig. yes, she's doing it again.....I wasn't asked, so didn't get to say no. Since I apparently have no input into this, I decided that I get to move a computer upstairs (Rose has been against having anything but a laptop upstairs. She just lost her vote). The media computer comes up here, finally. I doubt she knows that includes the stereo (hee hee hee).
The trip to New York came off without a problem. Kevin and I drove Rachel to her new 'home' and met the family she is living with. As we drove away, I was pretty uncomfortable with the idea of leaving her there. But, this was her choice, and she is old enough to make decisions for herself. Well, she called last night. Apparently, she's uncomfortable there, and is thinking about calling the Nanny service to help her find a new family. She still wants to do this, but it appears that this is not the right family for her. I really wish she had been able to meet them before deciding, but it didn't happen. It's hard to stand by while your children go through these inevitable growing pains, but you do them no favors by trying to bail them out whenever a problem occurs. We're still trying to figure out what the right amount of involvement is......
While we were in the 'Empire state' we were going to check out Manhattan, so on Saturday morning, we headed by train into the heart of New York City. Once we arrived at Penn Station, we walked the 4 or so blocks to the Empire State building. I knew it is a huge structure, but you have to see it to really appreciate the SIZE of it. Tickets to the top can be had for only $12 a pop, follow this line, please. At least some of the workers were polite. They have the cattle-herding process down pat, but I'm sure it's necessary. We waited in line for 20 minutes to buy tickets, then another 30 minutes in various holding pens until we got to step out on the observation level. During the whole process, I couldn't help it, every now and agin, a 'Moo' or 'Baaah' would slip out. I don't remember any of this from 'Sleepless In Seattle'. What's up with that???
Anyway, it was a nice day, very clear, visibility at 25 miles, and the view was spectacular. I plan to post some composite pictures from my trip to the top, just as soon as I get them done. After coming back down to earth, we found a subway station and got on, heading to the World Trade Center site. We were told that Canal Street is the place to get off, so we did. As it turns out, that's about 12 blocks from the site...12 BIG city blocks. By the time Kevin and I got there, we were both limping. It sucks getting old.....I'm glad we decided to go there, but I was a bit disappointed with the inability to see much. The fencing was not camera-friendly, and was too far back from the edge. I'm sure they need to worry about crowd-control, and keeping people from exercising their own stupidity, but it was still a little disappointing to be so restricted. Oh well, I'm sure they're upset I was disappointed (not).
Getting back on the subway (at the station right by the site, by the way), we found it was too crowded, and there were no seats. That was ok with me, it's walking that hurts. Kevin, however, was trying to not fall down from his sore ankle. A seat opened up fairly quickly, and he was able to sit down then. When we got back to 34th Street, we had about 4 blocks to walk to Penn Station. Four very crowded blocks. There were people everywhere, and one lesson quickly learned is that you can't be polite when trying to move. You have to walk as if people will get out of your way, and generally they will. We finally got back to Penn Station, caught our train back, and headed back home. I've had an experience I've wanted for a long time, and as far as I'm concerned, once is quite enough, thank you very much.
Posted at 6:49 on Saturday, April 24, 2004
I found this image here.
 | Accompanying text from the article: 'This image shows the differences in daytime land surface temperatures collected between July 2001 and July 2003. A blanket of deep red across southern and eastern France shows where temperatures were 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter during the summer of 2003 (Credit: NASA).' |
The track season is in full swing. Jon is having a good year so far. He usually ends up 2nd or 3rd in the sprints, and his relay teams are winning most of their races. Looks like it might be the boys turn to have a strong team. The high school girls team is doing pretty good, but this season will be a struggle. They don't have the depth in field events that's been there in the past. I'm sure they'll have a good year, though. We had a junior-high track meet yesterday. The Pickford girls won and the boys were second, I think. Ronnie ran the 100 (2nd place), 400 relay(2nd place by about 2 inches), and the 800 relay(1st). It was a pretty nice day, much better than the meet in St. Ignace on Tuesday. It was so cold and windy, and of course all I had was a light jacket. Most of the afternoon I looked for things to hide behind to get out of the wind. While hiding behind a door, someone came over and said 'You must be the smartest guy here' because I was out of the wind. 'If I was a little smarter I would have brought a heavier coat' was my response. A bit later I was standing on the leeward side of a small building, hiding from the wind again, when someone else came over and said 'You must be the smartest guy here'. I liked that line, so I used it again 'If I was a little smarter I would have brought a heavier coat'. Maybe I should copyright it so I could get paid whenever someone says it.
For some time, I've wanted to travel around the country, and it looks like my wish is finally coming true. We went to Texas a couple months ago, and in about two weeks, I'll be taking Rachel to her new job. Both she and Gabi have found Nanny positions in the New England area. I've never been there, so I'm looking forward to seeing a new part of the country. I hope to have time to do a bit of sight-seeing while I'm there. I am also hoping to hook up with Steve Heineman, a friend I've not yet met. A mail was just dispatched letting him know I will be in his area. I'll know soon enough if that's going to happen. Memories....
Posted at 23:46 on Saturday, April 17, 2004
Working on the site today. I've been interested in putting a calendar on the site, and found one that works well at the Codewalkers web site. It installed easily and, with a little tweaking, fits in very nicely. Once it was up and running, I started entering the 2004 Track schedule. At least now I won't need that piece of paper to keep track of when and where the meets are at. With both High School and Jr High meets to attend, it's non-stop until June, but I do enjoy it.
It was a beautiful day today. Around 60 degrees, sunny, with a bit of wind out of the Northwest. A couple more days like this one and the front yard will be completely dry. It can't come too soon for me. Of course, now we can see all the crap that the snow had covered. The coming of spring brings with it spring cleaning. A small price to pay, all in all.
The following little tale is a result of several hours in a car with the DITheads I work with. We were telling stories and this one popped out, so I thought I'd write it down. When I was in the Air Force, I worked on the B-52 aircraft that were stationed at Kincheloe Air Force Base, where I happen to work now (it was converted to a state prison in 1977). I was on flight status for a while, and flew missions when there were problems to evaluate. My first flight was so cool. I had a ringside seat right behind the pilot for the whole flight, and got to watch everything from takeoff roll to parking on the flightline. I had been given a headset to listen in with, but didn't hear anything. I remember thinking "These guys really know what they're doing. They don't even need to talk to each other". I eventually figured out it was because I had the headphones plugged in wrong.
Everything was fine until we went low-level (about 4 hours into the flight). Flying at 500 feet will shake you up pretty good, even in an aircraft as large as a B-52. Of course I had eaten my lunch, including the milk they so thoughtfully provided. Well, it wasn't long before I was puking my guts up. Note to self:Don't EVER drink milk before flying. The thing about air sickness is that you really don't start feeling better until you're back on the ground, so for the next 3 hours I was sick sick sick.
My next flight was better; at least I didn't get sick. I did, however, get a good look at the runway. For this mission, I was riding downstairs with the navigator and radar navigator. The r.n. noticed the latch wasn't completely closed on the belly hatch, and asked me to close it. Well.....instead of closing the latch I somehow opened it instead. The hatch swung open and I could see the runway rushing by (we were on takeoff roll at the time). Holding on to a support with one hand and the hatch handle with the other, I struggled to get the hatch closed so it could be latched. I was finally able to get it closed and latched without alerting the aircrew to what happened, but I've always wondered if the ground crew watching the takeoff noticed the hatch pop open.
Posted at 11:21 on Saturday, April 10, 2004
I had a 'Wow....that's my kid!' moment last night. Without going into details, Jon was in a potentially bad situation and made a good decision about what (not) to do. He demonstrated common sense that I probably wouldn't have given him credit for, and it both surprises and pleases me. I've whined in these entries often enough about my relationship with him, so I figure I should crow a little when he shows that he really is capable of making good decisions. He's still in trouble, but.....
Track starts next week. Jon is all geeked up about it. Ronnie is not as excited, but seems to be looking forward to the season. With both High School and Junior High meets to go to, it looks like I'll be taking some time off. It's just so much harder than it used to be. I used to be able to just go whenever I wanted, and I can still do that, but it's so much busier at work now, it's hard to feel good about being gone too much. As it is, I doubt I'll be able to make them all, but I will try.
I mentioned something about a van window a couple entries ago, but failed to give any details. Somehow, one of the rear windows in the van was broken while in the school parking lot. Heresay evidence shows that a bb or pellet gun was responsible, but I have no firsthand knowledge of the event. I do know a bb gun can break a car window, based on empirical research Neal and Nathan did some years ago involving a new bb gun and 'Spot's' rear window.
Texas....The Final Chapter
Sounds like a book title, doesn't it?
The remainder of our visit was fairly uneventful. We were planning a trip to Dealey Plaza in Dallas, but I discovered an antifreeze leak Thursday morning that had to be fixed, since we were back on the road the next day. It turned out to be the heater valve. This thing looks a little like a heart, with all the tubes running to it. $10.00, a couple hours of time, and we were all set. No Dealey Plaza, though. Oh, well. Maybe next time. We (Neal, Rene, and I) drove around for a while, and made an altogether good time of it. Frye's Electronics is a huge store, and has just about everything electronic. There were more geeks per square foot than I've ever seen before. I felt right at home.....
The drive home was ok. We took another route going back, so we saw lots of different scenery. I found out why Rose wanted to go that route when we got near Memphis. In this totally innocent voice, she makes the comment 'Graceland is in Memphis'. A few minutes later, 'We need to stop for gas' (she was driving). Oh oh...2+2. She finally just comes out with it. 'I want to go see Graceland. Is that ok with you?' What could I say? She already missed her trip to Dealey Plaza. 'Yea, fine, whatever'. Of course, since it was getting late, she started driving like a madwoman so we would get there before dark. She was scaring the crap out of me, actually. So we filled up at the gas station, and Rose came back with a head full of directions from the woman at the register. I took over driving duties so we would survive the experience (Rose is actually a very good driver, except when she's on a mission). We only got lost once on the way there, so that wasn't too bad. It was probably 15 miles out of the way, so that wasn't too bad either. Jon was skeptical about the whole side trip (he just didn't understand...this was ELVIS!!!) Well, we found the place
 |  |
 |  |
and walked around a bit. It was closed of course. Damn, that's a BIG parking lot. There's this whole little mini-economy built around the IDEA of Elvis. He's more popular now than he was when he was still alive.
So we're finally back on the road, an hour later and 40 bucks poorer (the Elvis junk shop, you know). The drive through Missouri was awful. Jon was driving, it was raining, and I was angry the whole way. It started because I wanted him to turn on the defrosters to clear the moisture off the windshield (it was raining and foggy outside). He wouldn't do it! I finally had to turn it on myself, which of course completely pissed me off. Afterwards, I couldn't seem to let anything pass without complaining about it (I'm a real pain in the ass sometimes, especially when I'm tired) Once we got past Indianapolis, I took over again, and drove the rest of the way to Mt. Pleasant.
We met Lindsey and Kevin at Nathan's apartment in Mt. Pleasant. Laini had a good time exploring Nathan and Alex's apartment, and I got the distinct impression that Alex would breath a big sigh of relief once we were out the door. If you aren't used to it, a three year old can seem out of control, almost like a force of nature. The reality, of course, is that all normal three year old children seem out of control. It's just the way it is. You need to keep a sense of humor and remember that this, too, shall pass.
After a side trip to the outlet mall in West Branch, we finished our trip by pulling into the driveway about 12:30 Sunday morning. On one of my trips carrying things in from the van, Ronnie came to me and said, with rather wide eyes 'Dad, you need to come into the living room.' It seems that while we were gone there was a storm which blew off some shingles, and allowed the rain to saturate a section of the drywall and the insulation above it. Once there was enough weight, the drywall collapsed, and a 4X6 section of the ceiling made it's way to the floor, along with the insulation that sat above it. It was one hell of a mess, and took about an hour to clean up and patch the ceiling with plastic. We should be recieving the insurance check any day now....Fade to white.........
Posted at 21:43 on Friday, April 9, 2004
This is great! Except for the woods and where snow was piled from plowing, the ground is just about clear. I lived through another one! My favorite time of year is just about to start....you know, the weather is nice during the day (still cold at night), no bugs, and the world starting to grow again. I just hope the lake levels go up a little this year. It's kind of disquieting to see how much they've dropped. It's supposed to be somewhat cyclical, but it's unnerving, none the less.
I supposed I should continue my little narrative about our trip to Texas and all....
 | Charlotte is wonderful, a real joy. We watched her while Neal and Jaclyn were working. |
I would have been happy doing that the whole time we were there, but Rose and Linda wanted to go to San Antonio to the Alamo, and some other stuff in that area. Whoopie!
 | I've been to the Alamo before, and although it is a historical site that is interesting in that regard, it hardly rates as a 'shrine'. They require you to take off your hat, for crying out loud. Anyway, I was in a pissy mood, but I was trying to be nice and not bitch too much. |
The day we were there, a bunch of folks (the shirts made it clear they were 'professionals') were busy setting up for the debut of the film 'The Alamo' on the following Saturday. 'What do you mean I can't walk here. Hey! This is America. And I'm an American!!!' I'm not sure I could say the same about the crew setting up the stuff. At least not officially, anyway.
 | We went down to the riverwalk area of San Antonio and ate lunch at a Tex-Mex place. It was kind of neat...lots of people, lots of restaurants, boat tours, no Mariachi bands, ok food. The bathrooms weren't (they smelled a little funny, y'know?). |
 | Gabi made note of a restaurant called 'Dick's' we walked by where the waiters were supposed to be rude to the customers. I think it's supposed to be funny. |
 | After lunch, we made it back up to street level a few blocks away from the 'Shrine to Liberty' and found this sculpture. I'm not quite sure what it's supposed to represent. Any hints would be appreciated. |
We eventually found the hotel and settled in for the night. They advertised a pool on the web site, but it was outside, and wasn't ready to use yet. Oh well, too bad. I guess it's the movies then. There was a 24 screen mega-thing a few miles away, so off we went, except for Rose. She stayed and slept, I think. The movie I saw, 'Spartan', was ok. I'm sure it was better than most of the stuff being shown.
On Wednesday, we went to Market Square and wandered around in the junk shops for a while. There were some real nice things there, but mostly toys, trinkets, souvenirs, etc. I did manage to find a marble chess set for 25 dollars. I was quite pleased. Earlier in the day we had stopped at an older church in downtown San Antonio and Rose, Linda, and the kids were wandering around the grounds and the gift shop there. I went for the pawn shop across the street, and found a couple guitars I thought were decent and a good price as well. I had to get out of there before the credit card came out, so I made my excuses and left (the owner wanted to sell that Alverez 6 string acoustic real bad).
Gabi sort of took over the photography duties the day before, so I left it up to her on Wednesday as well. She took some pretty good pictures, as well as a few blurry ones. She sure did take a lot of picures of Jon, though.
 | The old mission we visited was pretty interesting. I would have been perfectly happy not stopping, but since I was just a passenger....I was pretty adamant about not going to the second one, but, again, I wasn't driving. The compromise was that we drove around the grounds of the second mission. You see, it was starting to get late, and we really did need to get going. |
As it was we hit Austin just in time for rush hour and it took us well over an hour to make a fifteen minute ride. Too bad the DVD player wasn't working properly.
More to come.....Oh, the yellow rose of Texas..........
Posted at 22:10 on Tuesday, April 6, 2004
Where to begin? It's been fairly eventful since I last put fingers to keys, webloggingly speaking. There's been a trip to Texas, meeting granddaughter # 2, and having a van window shot out.
A few days before leaving for the trip, Kevin discovered a leak in the heater core Jon had neglected to mention. I suppose it's too much to expect that he might notice the fogging windows and antifreeze smell, or that he might think to mention it to me. I hardly ever drive the van, so hadn't noticed it. I guess I should have checked it out more thoroughly. So here we were, three days before the big trip and the dashboard has to come apart to replace the heater core. The last time I did this, it was just about a week to get it all back together. Thankfully, Kevin was able to help me (he actually did most of it) and we were back on the road by the next day. There was one leak, easily fixed (or so I thought). While the van was down, it got a tune-up, spark plug wires, rotor and distributor cap, oil change (synthetic oil, no less), a new serpentine belt (that just sounds sexy, doesn't it?) and a new air filter. All the attention paid off, because the trip to Texas went swimmingly. I drove most of the way, with Rose relieving me for about two hours, and Jon taking the midnight shift, about 4 hours worth. We were on the road a total of 27 hours, including a detour in Oklahoma City to find a fish place for dinner (it was Friday, after all). Surprisingly enough, we found it (about 10 miles out of the way) without getting lost in the process.
Once we crossed the Texas border, I started singing all the Texas songs I knew (not many, admittedly, and only pieces at that) to get the kids in the Texas spirit, but they didn't seem to appreciate my efforts...I thought all along they liked music, but it seems I was wrong...
This was my first time to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, and was pretty excited about going to an area I hadn't seen before. About 25 years ago, I was stationed at Sheppard A.F.B., near Wichita Falls. We never made it to Dallas, lack of money or interest the most likely reason. Neal's instructions were pretty good, so I only got lost once. Coming over a small rise, the lights of Dallas/Fort Worth spread out before us. It's a
BIG
place. Heavy traffic even at 9 PM, ramps going every which way. Cars were zipping by us like crazy, and I couldn't wait to get out of it. I'd been in the metro area for about an hour, and was already tired of it.We found Neal's apartment without too much trouble. Apparently, Jon had seen Neal through a window so he ran to that apartment and leapt over a short wall that is around their "patio"...SURPRISE!!!!! Jonathan does have a sense of humor, and I can appreciate it when I'm not too pissed off....Anyway, Neal and Gabi came out to greet us. It was so good seeing them again. I've gotten used to Neal being gone, since he's lived in Mt. Pleasant the last few years, but Gabi has only been gone a few months now, and I've missed her a bit since she left. Since it was late, we didn't get a chance to see Charlotte, but we were all tired so that was fine. After a few minutes, we left for Linda and Rene's house. It wasn't long after we got there that my systems started shutting down, and I was out for the night.
More to come on our trip to Texas, Charlotte, and van windows, but not tonight. It's late and I gotta work tomorrow.....A little this, a little that....
Posted at 9:03 on Saturday, March 13, 2004
Have you ever wanted to strangle someone? I mean REALLY strangle someone? My hosting provider was recently on my short list of candidates, as much for the indifference of the problems created as the actual creation itself. Not so much the support staff...they turned out to be fairly helpful. The company president, however, never bothered to respond to my e-mail, which bothers me A LOT. I'll need to look at other options when it comes time to renew. The problems started with the migration to a server that had a different directory structure, and a different MySQL config, so pretty much everything on the site died. It broke the photo album sorting too, because I depended on the date of the picture to place it in the sort order. Well, they all have the same date and almost the same time now, so no more sorting from newest to oldest. Damn.....I really liked that feature too. That's the biggest loss out of the whole mess...that, and the fact that the version of PHP doesn't seem to support the RSS feeds from the forums anymore. I'm trying to figure out a workaround for that. It took about a week to get everything functional again, between working, doing family stuff, and trying to figure out what in the hell happened. The upside? I have all the database connection info coming from the same file now, so I'll only need to worry about changing one file in the future.
We keep crawling toward spring. It never comes fast enough. At least the trip to Texas will help us get out of the snow for a few days. Supposedly we have had an average amount of snowfall this year. It sure doesn't seem average. I know the snow we get helps keep the lake levels up, but I don't have to like it, do I? The other night we had one hell of a windstorm. I don't know what the windspeed was but it sure did put a lot of snow in the air. I hope I didn't lose any more shingles....
Jonathan's first winter of driving is "interesting". The van has gotten stuck in the driveway 3 times this winter now. Oddly enough, Jonnyboy was the driver all three times. I'm not sure why it's happening so much, but I don't think it's the van's fault. Maybe I'm wrong.
Laini and Sara are doing great. Sara is starting to "verbalize" a lot now. She's making lots of noise and will be talking before we know it. Lindsey was very verbal when she was young, and Laini and Sara carry on that tradition. Lindsey called the other night, and I actually thought Sara was crying, but she was just talking to Mom. Laini is becoming more active and difficult to manage. Don't get me wrong...she's a sweetheart and a joy to have around. I love having her over. It's just that she gets upset if you tell her "no". Oh well, Laini, you better get used to it.
I'm pretty excited about the trip to Texas. I'll get to see Charlotte for the first time (I hope she's not afraid of my beard),and of course I'm looking forward to seeing Gabi, Neal, Jaclyn, and Linda and her family. It's a part of the country I've not been to yet, and a road trip in general is something I've wanted to do for some time. I sure hope the van works ok while we're gone. Nothing sucks like having a breakdown on a long trip.
There's some discussion about Rachel joining the military. Rose seems to be in favor of it, because she has this idea that women don't get sent to or near a combat zone. While that used to be true, it's not anymore. Equal rights, you know.....I can't say I'm in favor of this, but I wouldn't try and stop her if that's what she wants to do. Maybe it will give her the direction she seems to be lacking right now. We've made it clear that there will be NO parties at Gene's house (she's living there now), no exceptions. I hope she pays attention.......
Posted at 18:58 on Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Damn I'm tired. It started out a fairly normal day and quickly turned to shit. Brian left at 9am for a school function. Cathy was gone so I was watching her email and the trouble tickets. Along about ten came the first hint of trouble, which turned out to be the Bagle.B virus. All told, it wasn't too bad on our local lan. I have a feeling other areas of the network didn't fare so well. We probably received a dozen or so live payloads; after that it was notices that a virus had been caught and killed. There were several hundred of those, I'm sure. One of the ladies in another area ran the executable, and then realized what happened. She called and I told her to 'pull the plug immediately'. She did, and after reimaging, she went back on the network, a little wiser for the experience. Lots of email, phone calls, etc, advising people about the problem, and what to do with the e-mail. Add that to an already busy 'Monday' and it's easy to see why I'm tired. After work was shopping (can't find those ink cartridges anywhere in town. Damn) and once home, making dinner. Play with the grandkids for awhile, load the dishwasher, and before I know it, it's almost bedtime.
I made a mistake recently. I know it's hard to believe, but it really did happen. We (Tony, Jonathan, Anthony, and Garrett) were cleaning out Gene's house last weekend and in a frenzy of cleaning and pitching stuff, threw away a couple items that were apparently not on the 'pitch it' list. It seems there was this old safety deposit box that Rosalie had wanted to bring home. I'm also told there was a chair that Gloria wanted that didn't make it either. To me, the stuff was just junk....more things to clutter up my life unless I got rid of them. I had no doubt in my mind that their fate was to become part of Rose's ever-growing collection of stuff....unless I intervened. And intervene I did. We hauled away seven loads from the house...not everything but the majority of it. When I told Rose how much we hauled away her face got kind of white. It was almost funny. When she found out that part of those seven loads was her 'safe', it was anything but funny. She was furious. I guess I can't blame her...it seems that item was especially sentimental to her, because that's where her father kept all his important papers. I don't regret pitching it, I'm just sorry it hurt my wife.
Of course this means I'm on her 'list'. I'll probably have to do something to make up for it, like take that stupid Ballroom Dancing class....
Posted at 7:02 on Monday, February 16, 2004
Happy President's day, or is it merry President's day? I've never been able to keep that straight. But then again, I can't remember having a President I would classify as merry, so it must be door number 1. I get the day off for it, so dead presidents are ok in my book. At least I don't have to buy 'em flowers.
So did you get your honey a gift for Valentine's day? No? Me neither. Rose was working Saturday, so the big plans were unneccessary. Not that there were any big plans, but you know what I mean. This, by the way, is one of the things that annoy the hell out of me. Made up days, you know, like Valentine's day. A little research tells me that Valentine's day has been around for a LONG time, but not in it's current form. There is some thought that it was brought about to supplant a Roman fertility rite. YEA!!! I'm for the fertility rite, myself. All I know is it's one more day that I'm expected to do something.
Taxes....BAH!
There's been more discussion amongst the Home Recording crew regarding assembling a compilation disc of tracks from those that wish to contribute. So far there are two tracks offered. Sonic (Nilton) has offered one, and I've offered one. If the list is too short come the end of May, I'll can the whole idea, because it will be obvious that there isn't suffient interest or material to do a full cd. I suppose it would be possible to build a cd out of multiple tracks from each of the contributors, but then it gets into more money than I wanted to spend and the 'community' aspect of it gets lost.
When I first stumbled across the Home Rec chat room, it was so interesting. Sometimes I'd find 15-20 people in the room and all chatting about how to make and record music. The skill levels of the participants were all over the place, with much of the material being offered in styles I don't care for. It really didn't matter about that, and most people were supportive no matter what was being offered. Gradually, though, the room died down and now is just a shadow of what it was for a time. In the meantime, there's some excellent material I collected from the folks that made up the crew. It would make me proud to have a track sitting alongside stuff by Nilton, Jason, Steve, the Evil Rivethead, 8-bzag, error, and the others. It would be an audiograph of a group from summer camp. That was what it felt like at times, sort of. You know, you get stuck in a cabin with a group of kids from who-the-hell knows where, and you're expected to get along. It usually works to, unless you have a jerk in your cabin named 'Hollywood' or something like that. Not that that's ever happened to me, of course.
Gene's house is almost empty now. Five truckloads to the compactor, a load of old burnable stuff, and a load of furniture to my house. Two more loads should finish it off. I wonder who'll do it? It's very unlikely we will buy the place....it will most likely sell for more than I'm willing to pay. Of course, I chose a low value for two reasons. One, I didn't want the place to begin with. Too much work. The other reason, of course, is if we were going to put all that effort and time into it, I wanted to make a decent profit when it was sold. It seems, though, the housing market in Sault Ste. Marie is pretty good for these old 'fixer-uppers' and people are paying a whole lot more than I would for the honor of reconditioning houses that really should be torn down. I've had my stint in 'homeowner hell', thank you very much, and I'm not interested in going back for another stay. Anyone want to buy a house? It's got new plumbing.......
Posted at 20:46 on Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Winter drags on. The snow is knee-deep in the back yard, and it was plowed not long ago. I read it's an average winter, but it sure seems like a lot. The spring thaw beckons, but it ain't here yet.....
I learned a neat little trick the other day. At the site The Javascript Source I found a script that will zoom an image when clicked. Pat wanted a page that showed 6 pictures without scrolling. They are displayed at 160x120, and clicking an image would 'zoom in' to full-size. Clicking again reverts back to the thumb size. The images are only 320x240, so they load fairly quickly. Because the page doesn't need to be refreshed, it's much faster than opening a new browser window. Pat seemed to be pleased, I learned a neat Javascript trick, and got paid in the process. How cool is that? I bookmarked the site and expect to visit there often.
I was on hold with TurboTax tech support for almost one hour tonight. Of course, it was a chat window hold, so at least I was able to play cards while I waited. They must be real busy right now. It appears they removed the spyware thing this year, as was promised, since none of the spyware programs seem to find anything. Can we trust that? I sure hope so!
Posted at 7:30 on Saturday, January 31, 2004
We had a hoard of locusts descend on our house last night in the shape of teenagers. Jonathan had a birthday party and we ended up with 7 or 8 boys. They showed up hungry too, because when I looked this morning, all but 5 pieces of pizza had been eaten. Rose brought home 4 huge pizzas last night, each had 12 pieces. I had 3, Rose had two, Ronnie had a couple, minus the 5 left....that's 36/8....4.5 pieces apiece. add to that the birthday cake, ice cream, pop, and the oranges. I sure am happy I don't have to feed a large group of kids very often. Rose would have to get another job (hehehe).
I found a bunch of weblog RSS feeds on John Udell's Infoworld site, so I'm slowly adding the ones I like to my RSS page. There's some great stuff there. I was reading a discussion about an application called "RSS Bandit". It's a desktop RSS aggregator. That means it can pull down RSS feeds to your desktop without opening a browser. I prefer using the RSS page on this site; I can get it anywhere and others can see what RSS is about, but desktop delivery of web content will likely be the "next big thing". Once you use it, you can easily get hooked. Monitoring the forums used to be a lot harder, but now I just check the RSS feed. You owe it to yourself to explore RSS feeds.
We're headed to Mount Pleasant this morning to visit Nathan and meet Alex's parents. He must be pretty excited since he's called several times this week. We were talking about leaving by 9 but it's already 9:11. Damn these computers......
Posted at 5:58 on Sunday, January 18, 2004
It's my fault, I admit it. I should have come home right away after driving to the Soo to not start Rachel's car (she managed to get it started all by herself, but not till after I left). Instead, I chose to stop by and visit Fran, who now is living in Sault Ste. Marie. Well, one thing led to another, and the first thing I know it's 5:30 (when Fran's recording, the time just seems to fly by). Since the weather was really crappy at the time, and I had some shopping to do, by the time I got home it was after 6:30. Hmmm, Lindsey's car is in the drive, running. As soon as I walked in the door, everyone's (sort of) yelling at me, even Laini. "Where you been, Poppa?" You see, I had initially invited Lindsey over, and then thought I cancelled it when the damsel-in-distress called, but it seems Lindsey came anyway. "I'm getting ready to leave. I've been here for hours"..."I know, I smell like a cigarette butt"..."I know, I should have been home hours ago"...Geeze-O-Pete, now I gotta answer to my children and grandchildren. I'm too old for this shit.....
Emma called to see if I would take Sunday's masses at OLS and St. Stanislaus. I've been trying to end that obligation for some time now. I hardly ever play guitar anymore, so I'm always out of practice. My voice is not what it used to be either, mostly from lack of practice. Sometimes I think I sound like an old frog, just croaking away when I'm singing. Most people either don't notice or are too polite to say, but I notice. The main reason, though, is internal. Without going into detail, I'll just say it's harder than it used to be to stand in front of the church and sing these songs about faith and belief in this or that. Of course, when I was playing in a bar band, I sang about all sorts of things I didn't necessarily believe in. This seems to be different, though. At least, it feels different. In the 28 years I've been playing at church, I've easily played at over one thousand masses. Probably over fifteen hundred. Isn't that enough? Anyway, Rose talked me into it, so in about 15 minutes, I need to leave to be there for the 8:30 mass, and then on to St. Stanislaus for 11:00. I wish I could do it and be happy instead of all knotted up inside.......
Posted at 13:14 on Sunday, January 11, 2004
Laini's birthday party is today. Thankfully, Kevin's feeling better. It seems he developed a case of salmonella poisoning, he thinks, from some meat eaten last week, so Laini stayed at our house while Lindsey took Kevin to the E.R. He must be feeling better now, because our driveway just got plowed about 30 minutes ago. Not a lot of snow, but enough to be an inconvenience. It's good to see he's up and around again.
I've been working on a web database for Fran to use as he compiles the info for a book he wants to do. The book will be about Iron Maiden's touring history, and the recordings available from them. The list of shows is staggering, but considering the length of time these guys have been around, and the devotion to touring they have, it shouldn't be surprising. The funny thing is that I've never liked Iron Maiden, and still don't list them in my top 50 musical acts. The fun of building the pages, databases, etc, is what's in it for me.
Fran's introduced me to this whole sub-economy, using Iron Maiden stuff as currency. Bootleg recordings are prized, as is the official memorabilia. Got a concert book? That's worth 4 bootlegs. Or maybe 3. Or something like that. I even saw a program someone had written that he called "bootware". The cost of registration is a bootleg recording every so often. Amazing that so many people are collecting this stuff. Maybe I should listen to some of their music, so I could then understand where this devotion comes from.
Raising teenagers is never easy, but some are harder than others. Even though he hasn't been the most difficult (the twins win hands down) Jonathan tries my patience on a daily basis. Does he really think there should be no strings attached for the care and feeding of the vehicles he drives? I want him to take care of the recycling and keeping the basement presentable. It would be a good way for him to make some money. But, no, it's "ridiculous" for us to actually expect something from him when he excercises his "right" to drive a vehicle. We were talking (that means I was speaking and he was ignoring) about how parents should treat all their kids the same. It's impossible, of course. There is no way you can treat seven children exactly the same. That little bit of wisdom reminds me of a line from the very forgettable movie "Love Story". The female lead says something like "Love means never having to say you're sorry". What a load of crap!!! If you love someone, you damn well better say you're sorry when you screw up.
Being a parent means making the best decision you can at that time. The idea that you are limited in your options because of decisions made in the past is not only stupid, it's dangerous. For example, the decision to allow a child to drive in bad weather. Not everyone drives with the same level of skill or attention. My children are no exception. I worry every time Jonathan takes one of the vehicles. Not that I didn't worry about the others...I did. But it's different. He told me he drove the speed limit last night..."the road wasn't bad"...after I had called and told him I wanted him to come home earlier than he wanted to. I ended up taking his friend home and felt comfortable driving about 40 mph. I probably could have gone a little faster, but that was the speed I was comfortable. Is Jon a better driver than me? No. Why did he feel it was OK to drive faster than me? Because he has poor judgement. Should I allow him to drive in the same conditions I would let Lindsey or Neal, or the other kids to drive in? Therein lies the rub.
This idea bleeds over into other areas as well. I was discussing the Catholic Church with a family member some time ago that isn't Catholic. His position was that if it isn't in the Bible, it can't be from God. He was referring to the fact that the Catholic Church has introduced numerous concepts that aren't in the Bible. My response was "Why do you place limits on God?" He was taken aback by this idea. "I don't place limits on God" was his response. "Well, if you assume that God can't interact with man in ways that aren't recorded in a set of books almost 2000 years old, then you are certainly placing limits on what you think God can do" was my response. I don't think I convinced him of anything, but then again, that wasn't my goal. I've never doubted the existence of God, and identify with the priest in the movie "Rudy". He made the statement: "There's two things I know, there is a God, and I'm not him". All the rest is just guesswork.
How are these related, you ask? God can't change, and neither can parents. Is there a relationship here? Probably not.
Posted at 20:43 on Saturday, January 3, 2004
I did a little "consulting" recently and had to get down into the guts of the PASIII accounting system. I mentioned to the bookkeeper that working with it for twelve years had become "like lying in my bed at home". You know, it's so familiar, it's like second nature figuring out the problems. Oh, you got the wrong dates? No problem! Just open a text editor. Transaction deleted by mistake? No Problem! Notepad is the ticket. Of course, the newer accounting systems can't be adjusted in the same way. I'll miss that ability. There's more discussion about upgrading to a newer version, so it looks like I'll need to learn that package soon.
Fran and I were recently talking about a recording session we both worked on a few years ago, and I was reminded about the fellow that was recording. I noticed the sound of his guitar was very dull, and discovered that his pick was a matchbook cover. I found one for him to use. It helped a bit, and at the end he returned the pick. I said "Keep it. You get a free pick with every session." He appreciated it, and left. Fran and I got a pretty good chuckle out of it, and laugh whenever it comes up. Fran mentioned he came back for another session, and not only had a pick, he also had a new set of strings. He knocked out a cd's worth of material in a few hours. Way to go, Ed.
Posted at 8:55 on Friday, January 2, 2004
It looks like we'll be buying the old house, problems and all. Rose is set on it, and I guess I can understand that. She really doesn't have a clue how much work there is coming up, but then, she was never reluctant to work hard. Anyone have any extra kitchen cabinets? Cheap?
I figured out how to sort thumbs on an album page by the date of file creation. The advantage, of course, is that now the latest photos added will show up at the top of the page instead of in a random order. How did I do it, you ask? When loading the thumbnail page for any album, the directory is read into a two-dimensional array that holds the filename and the filedate. The array is sorted by the filedate and the thumbnails are displayed base