Day Log

So I've been using the 72 for a little over 24 hours now. It put in a full days work yesterday and only used about half of its battery, this included playing with the camera and bluetooth stuff a lot.

Even with the minor issues that I mentioned yesterday, mainly design issues. I love this thing. The screen is awesome and the speed is to. There is so much difference between the m505 and this one. Its a keeper for sure. I spend some time yesterday tweaking it out with my programs and such and now its working for me full time :).

I did manage to find a screen protector and a usb charger/sync cord for travel. I wasn't worried as much about syncing on travel as much as I am about charging, a dead PDA doesn't do anyone any good. I also set it up where I can connect to my powerbook via bluetooth to surf the web, so now at home as long as I'm in range I can do email and surf from the couch. Cool stuff.

I've only spent a few hourse with my Zire 72. Part of last night just getting it in sync with my powerbook and part of the morning getting it in sync with my work laptop. Here are a few of my thoughts. Its nice looking, seems very fast over my m505. I don't like the fact it doesn't have an attached flip cover of some sort. I did come with a case, but I tend to stick it in my pants pocket or shirt pocket, with out some screen protectors its gonna get all scratched up. I'm not very impressed with having to have a sperate power and hotsync cable. Its USB, why can that be the power and they sync cable, come on Palm third party developers have made these cables for years for the other models. Nobody wants to travel with a wall wart, I guess "consumers" don't travel. I also miss the cradle at work. That's not really much to complain about I guess. Having a 1.2 mega pixel camera is nice, but I haven't used it much yet. It does video as well, but you need to put in a SD card for that. The voice memo feature is nice. I haven't played back any music on it yet. So far so good, I'll have a good idea about battery life soon, I fully charged it last night and want to see how many days I can go.

So I've been a slacker around here for a couple of weeks now. What can I say I've been spending lots of them with the family and friends. I have a lot more "home work" than ever before also. Now that I'm back at the office maybe I can get back to this place.

Here is a review of the new Zire 72. Looks great, even without WiFi, I think I want one. Luckily its $300 cheaper than the Sony I was looking at. Heck, I might even order one today.

Update: Ok so i did order one.

Well I'm back in the office today. It was a great crazy week last week, and I really didn't want to come to work today, but thats the way it goes. The drive in was only 3 hours today thanks to some trucks that played crash up derby in the construction zone. They don't have the plumbing working either. I guess I'll play catch up for a while.

I guess that you can count on me making few posts this week and then baby ones :) I just put up a new pic at our baby blog if your interested Go here

Just the first of many I'm sure :)

I just wanted to make a be public thanks to Kevin and Merrin for being such great neighbors and helping us out these past few days. Thanks Mr. Air Conditioner repairman.

Mini is here, we are home and mom and baby are doing fine. More details soon.

Wow. Well things are about to change for sure.

Well day 3 without water. The biggest draw back is that its about a 12 minute round trip to goto the nearest restroom. Looks like its gonna be that way for at least a week or more.

I got to play with yet another printer today the HP 1100dn business model. Nice printer, but 8 printer cartridges, wow.

I added a new 512mb SODIMM to my power book last night, brining it up to 640mb. There is a huge difference, I should have done this long ago.

You know its gonna be a good day, when you get to work and discover water flowing out of the electrical sockets. Luckily its downstairs and not in my office. I did have time to power all the servers down before we killed the main power. Plumbers are on the scene. Its been frantic moving people around and such all morning. I could really go into a rant here about being prepared for this sort of thing, but it wouldn't matter. I hope that some of this plants management thinks about these sorts of things in the future and makes the much needed changes to be ready next time.

Last week i setup Cygwin-X on my laptop. I've used Xceed as my Xserver for windows for ever. So far this seems faster to me. And it was so easy to setup and get going. I haven't used any of the local apps much, just connecting to remote servers and workstations. But it does load several things for you to play with.

Today I setup cron from Cygwin on my Win2k laptop and copied several perl scripts from CVS and modified them for win32. I now have my whole development setup locally on my laptop and can sync it quickly with my servers. I did this so that I could grab my laptop and go when I get "the call" :) Not many days left until 2.0 is here.

And just for fun I loaded up the cygwin version of Smartmontools.

Another great weekend on the mound. Let me see if I can document a summary for you. Friday night Camille and I stayed home and enjoyed a meal (Bacon and Avocado Sandwiches) and a movie (Signs). Before the move could start we did have to make a candy run to have a proper movie watching environment.

Saturday, mostly home improvement stuff, lots of it. Saturday day night we went to Simply Fondue in Flower Mound with some friends P&K and had a great time. After that we came back to our place for coffee and hung out late.

Sunday, more home improvement. I finally fixed the floor (best I could) and started getting the quarter round down. I also delivered the couch, chair and tables that we sold a friend. We had some great burger's with our friends J&J and headed back home.

It seemed like it went by so fast.

I've been in deep Organizing/Cleaning/Planning mode for the last few weeks. I'm sure that part of it is being brought on by the fact that Camille and I will be parents in a few more weeks (man that sounds weird, me a parent) and also since our house is now ours, we can do what we want with it as far as organization goes.

Deep organization on the powerbook. I've been going through all the stuff i dump in the NEW folder. Some of its audio that goes into iTunes, the docs go into DEVONthink. And i give the various bits of software a try before i keep or toss. I started slowly moving photos from iPhoto to iView Media Pro (the trial, will have to purchase soon). Working in small groups I move them over and overly catagorize and tag them. I've then been moving them from the local hard drive to the firewire drive, as I'm running low on space. I hope to continue doing 100-200 a night until I'm done. I've been moving a few albums over from the network share into iTunes also. Lots of tag cleanup involved, so just a few every night. Lastly I've been sorting and working with the docs in DEVONthink, I can find just about anything now. I've also been organizing stuff on the Win2K box many media files and its coming together. A digital spring cleaning.

On the home front, lots of things have been going on. I've developed a master cleaning plan in Bonsai on my palm. Its got daily, weekly, monthly and yearly tasks in it. So far I've been staying with it, and must say that the house is staying very clean these days. I've even gone so far as to schedule the tasks in my calendar so I make sure I do them, I know your starting to think I'm nuts.

Something else I've been trying for the last 2 weeks is a weekly menu. Sunday afternoons I plan out all the meals for the week, with Camille's input of course. Then I gather all the recipes and make a list in SplashShopper and head to the store. Its really worked out great. I've managed to freeze about 10 meals along the way, so when Camille is home with the baby, she want have todo anything but thaw something out and heat it up.

I've been spending some time on the weekends working on on things in the house. Our kitchen is perfect for us, I know where. everything is. When I unpacked all the kitchen stuff, I left several things in boxes. So only 1 item has been missed so that show we had junk we didn't need. I have one small item to finish this weekend in one of the drawers. Of course we have some grander plans for some appliance replacement, but that can wait a few months. The next target area is the pantry, it needs a few things removed and organized better.

We've spent a bit of time getting the laundry room organized as well. New shelves laundry bins, wall hangers that sort of things. It turned out really well and seems room and uncluttered.

The dinning room and living room are open and there isn't much to organize. The next focus will be to get a narrow entrance way table made to match the other tables and to decorate more, its pretty bare at the moment.

The office is sitting there with some of the old stuff in it. Its sorta clean sorta messy. My big plan is to build in some work areas and book shelves this summer.

The master bed room needs some more work, I've got to finish fixing the floor ASAP. That's really the room that needs the most work before the baby gets here. That's my priority for the weekend.

I've been doing similar things at work. Thanks to my palm work and home are synced. I've been making much use of my tools to stay organized. At work: Lotus Notes (email, todo, calendar, memos, address book), DayNotez, Bonsai, FireFox. At home: Mail.app, iCal, iSync,iTunes,iView Media, DEVONthink, iMemo, OmniOuliner, Safari, SplashSuite and NetNewsWire. On the Palm: DayNotez, Bonsai, ToDo, DateBook, Memo, SplashSuite. I'm sure there is more, thats one heck of a brain dump there if I had a wireless link to my brain I would blog more :) . Back to work.

Its getting close to a point where I need a new handheld. My m505 has been great, but Its just not cutting it for me anymore. I've had it for 2ish years (or more). I have 2 contenders: Sony Clie PEG-UX50 and the Handspring Treo 600. Each have there strong and week points.

Sony Clie PEG-UX50 Pros:
WiFi
Bluetooth
Voice Memos (don't know if the Treo does them yet)
Cons:
Connecting to my existing cell phone to the net is expensive.

Handspring Treo 600
1 Device, no need carry Cell Phone + PDA, it also does Audible, so maybe even leave the iPod at home? This could cut down on gadget clutter.
Always connected to the net, no need to have to connect to it via a seperate phone, some services providers make this cheap, unlike the terrible rates from AT&T i get at the moment.

Right now I'm leaning towards the Sony. Anybody with either of these devices care to comment?

Looks like its gonna be a long busy day today. We goto the baby doctor today we are just weeks away at this point. Hope you have a good one.

Last night Kevin took me out to a Dallas Stars game. It was a blast, thanks dude!

Camille and I headed to the country this weekend for a lowtech weekend. A cell phone was all we carried. I was great to get away for a few days. I got todo some fishing with my dad and visiting with friends and family. Thats gonna be our last get away for some time. Just a few more weeks til baby is here. I'm running around like a mad man at the house trying to finish up all the little projects, trying not to be nervous :)

4 Years ago today, it all started with a test message. That was on blogger i think. Prior to that eveything was done with some hand rolled perl. I hope to find that content on a CD one day and add it to my archives.

Mikes got a good post up today on his views of Open Source and small business. Since my response was jumble in the comments I'll post them here. It would be a good idea to read his post first.

My Response:
"Let's try and find a sales person whose familiar with Linux, OpenOffice, Mozilla, and Evolution. Remember this is a non-technical job, so we're talking about a non-techie who is familiar with these things. Sort of limits your possibilities, doesn't it?"

Since this is a non-technical job, the assumption to me is that anytime the computer breaks, they will call you anyway. So first off the OS doesn't matter that much, it boots up, they log in, they have a window manager they have links to there programs and files. This is fairly standard across the board these days in Windows/Linux/Mac/whatever. This is all setup by IT so, it shouldn't matter as much. Navigation is pretty much the same in Linux and Windows. Second up is OpenOffice, if you've used MS Office, using OO is the same to me, different names, but since this is non-technical they shouldn't have a problem writing a letter/memo or a spreadsheet. Third up is Mozilla, other than the name, there really isn't a difference, a web browser is a web browser (for the most part). You have bookmarks, address bar, back and forward buttons, what else do you need? And lastly Evolution, if you have used outlook, you can use Evolution, again since its non-technical, you can get mail and you can send mail. Now maybe I'm over simplifying that, based on not knowing specifics.

"OK, so we'll just find someone with the ability to pick up some techie stuff relatively easy. Except who's making the hiring decision? Not a technical person. Someone who would have to be pretty darn familiar with that stuff already himself, and comfortable not only in using it, but in knowing who is going to be best able to learn it. No one in management fits that description for Windows, let alone Open Source."
That's a problem that we all have to deal with. Its not often that any non-technical gets a once over from IT, usually the required skills for the job cover that, if they don't its even worse. Its easier to hire a person that is good at what they do, computers can always be taught. Most companies would go for the hot shot sales guy with little computer knowledge over a computer guy with no sales experience.

"Or if they find someone but later decide they want them to be able to do some database manipulation, is there going to be a place I can send her to learn MySQL, or am I going to be spending a whole lot of my time teaching it to her? Is the person making the hiring decisions, who has been unable to discern Access skills previously, going to be able to discern MySQL skills?"
You've got a good point here, there probably isn't much training out there for desktop mySQL usage. That probably really is the weakest point in some ways. Depending on what database manipulation you're looking at
basic client software isn't that hard to write if its really deemed necessary, or a web front end. Now you don't have to do this with access, so it would be a stumbling block.

"You see where this starts to get really complicated compared to Windows and Office, don't you?"
Personally I don't other than the Access/mySQL issue.

"I haven't even begun to get into the hassles of training current users who are not at all technically inclined, or the additional cost of finding someone to run all of this if I leave, compared to the cost of finding someone who can step in and admin an existing Windows network."
Your going to have training issue regardless of what platform your running on, at least we do here. As far as the additional cost of finding someone, I think that you probably wouldn't find it that much more difficult as more people are learning linux/open source these days. I also think that there are probably more windows admins out there that have learned some linux stuff than you think. At least in my area, most of the guys that I know are familiar with it , even if they don't use it at work.

"Microsoft products may cost more, and may be more vulnerable to bugs and hackers, but there are a ton of people who know how to use them. And isn't getting things done the point of having PC's in your business to begin with? Having Windows and Office makes it easier for us to get things done. Using other alternatives, right now, unnecessarily complicates things. Until using open source is common and wide-spread among non-techies in the workforce, I don't think it can compete. How to get there is the challenge developers should be looking at. "
MS stuff does cost more, way more. What would be interesting to know is what is the total cost of MS Software + training cost vs Open Software + training costs.

Now let me say, I'm glad you brought this up today, lots to make the brain work. Several things would have to be clarified before I would be sold on the "Open Source doesn't compare in small business". I should also point out that I think that MS is an excellent office suite, I'm not MS basher we run our business with it on the desktops. Mike, if you don't mind sharing some numbers, what are you considering small business?

This really on touched the topic of the desktop, perhaps tomorrow the topic would be behind the desktop on the servers. I'm curious to know your thoughts on that.

Another Monday just about gone. I finally heard back from the sotware vendor today (its been 7 days) and they confirmed there is a bug in the upgrade (duh!). They were supposed to contact me today around 2 or 3, but never did and of course couldn't be reached. On the positive side, I got to start back developing stuff this morning and put the finishing touches on 2 systems that can now be used by the staff. Thats left me with just enough time to play with REALbasic some more. I've started work on this simple program to help me with some development chores. Very basic at the moment, but I've got big plans for it.

Often I get emails and such from people that want to know how I do so much stuff. I get tons done at work and have more hobbies than anybody should. I try to lead a balanced life between work, home, and hobbies. I've been on several mailing lists about GTD for years now and believe in good organazation (except in my home office at the moment). I'm always looking for new ways to get more done. Anyway yesterday I came across a few GTD type weblogs that I thought i would share.

GTD to me
David Allen

If you have any releated blogs you would like to share on GTD or organization or Life Balance comment or email them to me.

I've seen the Soyo TechAid online for 35 - 50 bucks today. It looks like a great piece of hardware, has anybody every used one of these? If so would you recomend it?

I'm still (day 4) waiting on my database problem (actually probably a software export problem, since the database works). I guess they are having a harder time with it than they expected. Anyway this leaves me with time to experiment.

Today I've learned alot more about Bind and DNS than I've ever known before. I also got to get my feet wet with setting up virtual servers on apache, something I've never done. Getting a nameserver setup was no problem, we didn't have one running in the company (don't even get me started I can go for days) now we do. This is going to be helpful to me I think, even though have so many ips in memory. After that was working i setup some subdomains and virtual servers, just for fun. I guess its good practice for one day when I have to host all my own stuff.

What a morning, the database issue still hasn't been resolved so I've been taking advantage of the non dev time.

I've managed to empty my inbox, some of this went into the to-do list others got done on the spot. I've really caught up on my to-do list. I resetup the CVS server after last weeks drive failure and checked in a lot of my work to it. After I finish this post I'll be modifying the unix backup exec agent to backup the new location. I installed ntop 2.2 on it and got that all going. Now I need to reimage the whole machine again so I won't have to do this steps next time disaster strikes. I also caught up on tons of non-server related stuff. My to-do list is nice and slimmer now. Back to it.

I got a couple of new things in this week
SanDisk 256 MB CompactFlash Card with a nice fat rebate almost got it for nothing. I'm so afraid to run out of space when I'm out taking photos this should help.

Viking IntelliFlash 6-in-1 USB Flash Memory Reader - My old reader didn't work with my Mac and I haven't been downloading my photos as often as I should, now I don't have any reason not to.

I've been a fan of Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell since high school. I'm not sure of the exact year, but I'm guessing around 1991. I first discovered the work of Boris through his Series 1 Collector Cards (of course they weren't called Series 1 back then). A friend of mine BH had recently introduced me to the world of comics and comic shops. I discovered the tiny bits of artwork and really was amazed at it. It was nothing like this small town boy had ever seen before. I've enjoyed his work ever since. I think I still have all those cards plus several of the art books. My introduction to the work of Julie Bell came not long after that. I think it was mentioned on the back of one of the cards or in an art book. Soon there was a set of Julie cards that I collected as well. I still enjoy there work but haven't thought about them in a while, until I came across there site tonight and the memories came to me.

Every so often (ok several times a day) I find my self over at Feedster doing searches instead of google. I could write a post on why, but not now. Today I typed in "Flower Mound" just to see what all comes up, lots of my stuff and my friends and some new stuff.

What I find notable today is Flower Mound's best restaurants - the definitive list. Its from another bloggers perspective, and that's usually the most honest. There are a few places on the list that I've been to but most I haven't but now look forward to trying. I have been to #1 and #2 on the list and agree they are both great.

I'm still waiting for the software vendor to respond to the database issues after the upgrade. I honestly knew better than to upgrade to a new version when the old version was working fine. I should have stopped myself but didn't. Now I'm paying for it. Its even worse now that they have new people there. My old college/friend who has been there 8 years, is no longer there. I can tell the difference already, and its not good. Looks like I'm gonna have to call in another hour or so. I really don't want to bug them, but this is my development database and I can't develop, so.... At least I'm catching up on my to-do list.

For the last couple of working days, I've been caught up in database hell. I've been trying to run an export out of V6 so it can be distrubed to customers and internal staff. I've been getting this message:

"Master record missing violation of FOREIGN KEY constraint "FK1_FRATYPE_BLOBS" on table "FRATYPE_BLOBS"

I've been thinking it was something that I did that was server related since I've reconfigured my mashine since I did the last export. This morning I realized that it was not my fault, it was the programs. I had all most forgotten that the vendor sent out programe/database update a couple of weeks ago. I haven't done an export since then. Whe I did the roll back to an older version it worked fine. So now I've got to wait on them, there is to much work that would be lost to actually roll back and redo, so I hope they come up with a fix. As it stands they haven't returned my calls or emails I sent at 8 this morning.

One day last week Camille pointed out that one of the pieces of flooring was not flush anymore. This piece happened to be in the middle of the closet entrance. Thats not to bad i thought.

Today I removed all the flooring from the closet and got down to the piece and discovered that it had gotten wet. Don't know how that happened with the moisture barrier and all, but it did. So I finally worked it out and its all warped up. So now I think there is another one to fix so I've to try to figure out what caused it. I may actually have to call in a professional on this, not sure yet. But I'm not jacking with it anymore tonight thats for sure.

Well it was another exciting night in the Mound last night. Kevin and Merrin came over for some grub. Kevin and I cooked up some of the thickest steaks around. It was a short night, but the food was good. This is becoming a weekend habit, and a good one at that.

Lots of projects planned for the weekend, lets see how they go.

So I guess its about time that I actually posted something in person not one of the bots. I think a new visitor would suspect that this is just another link dump site, well normally its not.

Work has been very intense lately same for the home life. My calendar has been full from 5:45am to 12:30am for the last couple of weeks. Any spare time that I've had has been sent relaxing. So in summary, the bots haven't taken over and life and work are great and busy.

Working Papers X - "WorkingPapers lets you scan in business documents and color photos using many of today's leading scanners. Search by content, filename, volume name, comments, or categories of your making. Organize your documents into collections and find files stored on floppies, CDs, cartridges, or Zip drives." - More on this one tomorrow after I deal with several weeks worth of paper.

"gpsWrite is an application that allows you to enter, import and organize waypoints, tracks and routes. With it you can easily enter waypoints, tracks or routes and save them to file." Looks good does exactly what it says. I'm not sure it will replace my current GPS tools but it offers a different perspective.

QIF Master "QIF Master makes it easier to enter banking, credit card, and investment transactions into Quicken. " - Not sure I need this at the moment my plan is to get Quicken installed and setup tomorrow.

Coccinella looks interesting. I need a drawing board like this the other day.

Powemate Driver updated

Salling Clicker 2.1 has lots of changes, including using the external script editor (good!).

Home Guardian Review I've been thinking of giving this a try.

Proteus 3.0.6 fixes the MSN and Yahoo problems we've all been having.

I know its not a viewsonic, its a sony. The specs look good what do you LCD masters think? Sony 17" LCD on sale.

Since we were so close to Apple store yesterday we swung by to get some new software. The haul was:
Quicken 2004 - Since leaving my PC for a Mac, i ditched MS Money but never replaced it. Now its time to get caught back up. Looking at quickens bill pay service, I can't figure out why its so much higher than other places. I have been using msn for a couple years now an its about $6 a month, I plan on trying my banks bill pay now that they have it setup.
Turbo Tax - Its that time of year.
iLife '04 - I can't wait to give the new iMovie and iDVD a go.

I also purchased Unison online. My trial was up and this is just a really good app for usenet.

I got myself a new DeWalt drill today . Sure they are pro tools, but I'm a pro (in my mind). So far so good this baby should last a while. I used it to setup the work area in the garage today. Now i just need to install some pegboard later this week. Perhaps I'll post some pictures after I do that.

We finished up the class today. My N.A.D.D. really kicked in, the pace was way to slow. I did actually pick up a few tips and I guess we need to practice our breathing over the next few weeks.

We went to the first part of our lamaze class tonight. To be honest it was a bit boring, the instructor really needs to pick up the pace. Camille brought me a yummy BLT from Crescent City , man now that's a BLT.

I don't know how it came to mind today, but I found a link to 2-XL. I had one of these great learning tools as a kid. I rember playing with it alot. I hope that it still around my parents place somewhere. If not, I noticed one on ebay, not that i need one.

When we moved we were pretty orgainzed. The only few boxes that I didn't label or color code were the very last ones. I know what is in about every box. But there is one box that I really need, and I can't find it. Its been very frustrating. This weekend I plan on finding that damn box, I will probably have to unpack more stuff than I wanted to accomplish this. This might be a good time for dowing some "clean sweep" piles also.

I think Camille sums up our KR experience from last night. While not a bad show, we both came away a little disappointed.

Well its about time that I pick up a LCD that I've been needing. I've found 2 that I think are affordable. Do you have any opinion on the Syntax ST801s 18" or the GEM GL-1821A 18". Let me know of if you have another recomendation in the 18" range and the $400 range let me know that also.

Looks like the company I work for may be for sale. This comes just a few days as one of our biggest competitors was bought.

It looks like I can join the masses with iPod battery life suckage. I've had my iPod just over a year and this week I got about 4 hours out of the last full charge. Looks like its time to start looking for a repair service. I agree with the others , this sux.

It's been one sql of day today. I've been tracking down a very though database problem for the last couple of days. I've finally found the row that I think is causing the problem, hopefully tomorrow I'll figure out what the fix is.

Well we are home. The move went well, the movers were done about 1pm. We even went back and cleaned the apartment. On the home front the priorities are taken care off. Highspeed connection (3mb), router, wifi, and the Tivos. Now to rest and enjoy before the unpack starts.

I'm guessing that House updates are gonna be part of my weekly routine for a while :). I spent most of the day yesterday at the house. I got a lot of the quarter round ready to put down. It took more paiting and sanding then I expected. I also finished up all the painting (for now anyway). Some of the trim will need to be painted it looks like somebody poured paint all over it. But that can wait. I also finished up the master bath and kitchen and caulked a few areas that needed it. I then clean up all the inside mess.

Tonights focus is to get the quarter round down in the guest room, since thats where we will be staying for a while and to clean the window, paint the window sill (if it doesn't clean up), and hange the mini blind in there. That will have us in good shape to move in tomorrow. My projects will be on going, I guess I should really post some pictures soon.

Things at the house are going well. We finished up all the flooring yesterday and I took my dad back to East Texas. I've still got all the quarter round to paint and install. I should knock most of that out tomorrow. I've also got alot of painting todo. It seems that our "painters" got in a rush on several places. I've got one whole room to repaint and several other walls that need repainting. Its gonna be a very long day tomorrow. *sigh*
Its my last day off before the move on Friday so I'll do as much as I possibly can. I guess what doesn't get done can wait a few days. Friday is the move and Saturday I'll be cleaning the apartment and doing some unpacking. Sunday may give me more time to work on things.

On a positive note the floor looks awesome and the digital cable and high speed internet are working.

Tonight we finished up packing the kitchen and living room. That leaves just a little in the office, which I'm going to try to finish up with all paper related items tonight, and the clothes. Oh, and I have to do the balcony closet. Time is ticking away, but I think we will make it.

Its been a heck of a weekend Friday night we went to Shreveport to see ole George Straight, I'm not sure why there weren't any close Texas shows this year. Saturday we drove back to Dallas with my dad. We have been putting the new flooring down.

Its not really that hard the tricky parts are around the door jambs. We should have it all down by the end of the day tomorrow.

Camille has more thoughts on the weekend here.

Well since everybody else is doing it, I guess I'll be a lemming.

create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide

create your own visited country map
or write about it on the open travel guide

I got a lot done at the house last night. I prepped all the bathroom and master bed room trim. It need a little dap here and there and some scraping in places. It should be ready to paint tonight. Camille went room to room doing minor touch (some major) touch up work. Its all coming along nicely, and I've decided that its not going to be possible for it all to be 100% by next Friday, because I'm way to anal about things. But that's OK, I have accepted the fact that there will be on going projects for the first year or so.

We also bought our flooring. Camille found the flooring she liked at Lowes, luckily they stock it. We are going with Pergo Select. Consumer reports gives it there highest rating and 14 out of 15 people that emailed all have various types of Pergo and were all happy with it. I think that says alot about the product. Also our realtor is happy because it will increase the value of our home for the future sale. I have to pick it up tonight and move it in the house. If all goes well my dad and I will start installing it Sunday, maybe even Saturday depending on how the prep work goes.

I'm really enjoying getting my hands dirty working on OUR house. It doesn't even seem like work at all to me. Of course I was a carpenter for several years before I was a IT guy.

Its been a full day today. I started the day of with 2 very bad bugs in V6 (our estimating software). The first was in a Macro (SaxBasic) that was causing all work to not be saved, then loosing any work you did since the last save. It took me about half the day to find the exact location of the error, recode it, test it. Then I had to create and installer for it with NSIS and test that. The finally it could be put on the internal web server and distributed.

Next up was a not so nasty bug. I forgot to change around several classification ids before a database shipped to a customer. *whoops* So a little sql later and that was fixed. With some help from isql (command line sql program) a small text file and NSIS i had it all tested, wrapped up and out in almost another half day.

So since the day is almost over and I'm on a database role. Here are couple of new things I've found.
1) dBforums - "Design, Develop, Administer". I haven't got a chance to really check it out yet, but it appears to be good.
2) MiTec Interbase Tools - "A must-have tools for every Interbase administrator or developer. These pieces of software are FREEWARE!" Looks like a couple of really good tools, and most of the functions work with Firebird running on a remote server. I've been playing with Interbase Query, specifically watching the perf mon. Looks like some new additions to my database tool box for sure, and the price is great.
3) Firebird Frenzy Erupts

It was a very busy weekend.
Camille recaps Day 1
and
Day 2

We still need todo touchup work and some trim work. I also need to get the floor ordered, its not gonna be there when I want it anyway now. I'm debating if I'm gonna paint tonight or just take the night off. We are in good shape time wise and I do need to pack some more at home.

Camille's family all made it in today. The whole house is now taped fixtures removed and plastic is down. The painting will start bright and early tomorrow.

We've decided not to touch the guest bath. The wallpaper really need to be removed and the walls textured. We do have some ideas of how we want it all done, but thats something that can wait. The focus is paint and flooring before be move in.

Now time for some rest.

I started working on the house last night. I got a few rooms taped off and ready to paint. I also tore down some chairrail and wallboard in one of the rooms. Its gonna take a little extra work to get the drywall ready to paint in that room. It was a good start in what is sure to be a long weekend.

On a work related note we are replacing some of the old IBM gigantor printers with HP 1300n printers. The first one is setup and we should know how things work out over the next week. I've got 5 more here ready to go.

I suspect that i'm going to be well out of any tech loops for the next few days, but I guess that ok. Do some home work is a good feeling.

Wow what a crappy morning thus far. I woke up with a sore throat, lets hope this doesn't last. As soon
as I finished my first cup of coffee, i returned it rather unpleasantly if you know what I mean. As soon
as I get to work i get a BSOD on my Win2k laptop and loose everything i was working on. My palm crashed and would only reset after all the data was deleted. Then the Hotsync quit working again, so now I'm having to-do the battery run down trick and hope that fixes the hotsync. Anyway the day off to one heck of a start. At least I know that at 5 I can head home and start painting all night :)

Looks like we have a new house. We are about to head over and get the keys, LAISSEZ LES BONS TEMPS ROULER.

I've been banging away at the keyboard for the last 2 days. My project is looking really good, I'm just a few days away from having an usable product. Hopefully some of the estimaters will actually use it.

Its been a busy day lots of running around and such. I did get a new case for my file server and another drive. I've got everything switched to the new case and running fine.

I also did some more packing, until I ran out of boxes. I guess thats it until we get some more boxes tomorrow.

Last night I went out with a few guys from work for drinks at this little joint called the Banana Boat. It was fun, its actually the first time that I can remember in 4 years that I've been out with people from the company for drinks. I guess some new blood helps.

After that I hit Chili's for a little food and got to catchup with some of the regulars. This is probably the only thing that I'm gonna miss after the move. I've been hitting this Chili's for almost 7 years now, but I'm sure I'll still swing by on occasion.

Today there are big plans in the works. Looking at paint and flooring. If i can talk Camille into it a trip to Frys also :). I need a new server case and the 250gig HDs (yes i need another one) are on sale for $150 after rebate. There is also a Dallas Home and Garden Show, that we may hit also.

Do any of you home owners out there with laminate flooring have any suggestions for brands and such? Brands that you didn't like or had problems with? We are considering putting some in the new place and I would like to have some opinions. Consumer reports says Pergo (the brand) and Formica (the brand) are the best. I'm also planning on installing this myself, so ease of install is also important. Thanks.

Theres nothing like some King Cake and a cup of Community Coffee to help you through the afternoon.

According to Camille we close as planned on the 28th. I've really been looking forward to being a homeowner lately.

Well were are back from our SanAntonio trip. We had a blast with Kevin and Merrin. Its really to bad that I can't post much about the trip. There was an unspoken agreement not to blog most of the great stories :)

The food was good, the beer was good and the company was great.

Camille bought some geeky baby stuff for me/the baby at think geek. Poor thing isn't gonna have a chance :)

I'm glad today is over. Its been a super busy one. There are all kinds of screwed up things at the office still but they can all wait until Monday. Thats right Monday.

This morning I had calls from 3 users. They couldn't log into there Windows 2000 computers with there passwords. They could log in only if they used a blank password. They also went on to mention that this has been happening about a week, but they didn't think it was a big deal. I was able to reset all them back.

These computers were not part of a domain. Has anybody else seen this problem in the past week? Any ideas what may have caused it? I really want to get to the bottom of this but finding it on google or microsofts site is like a needle in a haystack.

Update: I'm beginning to think these guys simple hit the ok button and left the password blank after they were supposed to change it last week. Who knows.

I've been busting lots of extra tail trying to complete a project by the 21st for a presentation/training session. Sitting in the pre session meeting today, I discovered that there was actually going to be no time for me to present train. So now I guess I don't have to work late every night, which is a good thing. But its pretty disappointing. Here are some interesting bits that cause this.

I can go on and on about this, and this is how everything is.

I noticed over the weekend that something happened to my linux box. I'm not exactly sure what but I couldn't SSH into it. I flipped to it on the KVM and the screen was frozen. I did a reboot , i think up time was 4 or 5 months. Nothing perhaps the video card went out, beats me but it may just have to wait until after the move to get fixed. I think I don't really need for the next couple of months.

While we were out running errands yesterday I picked up Mac OS 10.3. So I can finally upgrade. I really haven't had the time until now. I just finished all my backups and will start upgrading soon!

Update: All went well, i'm now on 10.3 and finding all the cool new things. My powerbook even feels more responsive, of course that could be because its the first reboot in a month or so.

Camille and I went out on a sorta spur of the moment dinning trip last night. Our friends P&K called us up. We meet them at Papadeaux over at restraunt row. We had some beers and some good food, and most of all we had a very good visit. Its been a heck of a weekend.

As for the food. I had "the special". That was blackend Mahi Mahi with a shrimp and scallop sauce. It was very good the fish was fresh and cooked perfectly. The beer was cold and considering the huge, huge crowd the service was great.

Yesterday was a great day. I got to the point on my project at work that I needed to be at. Its been a really kick ass week on the work front, I hope it continues.

Yesterday afternoon we had our potential new house inspected and we were very happy with the results. We then went and had pizza and beer with Kevin & Merrin.

We had sort of planned on heading back to east texas this weekend so i could duck and varmint hunt, but we decided to stay home and start packing and getting ready for the move.

I should add that yesterday was the first time that I actually saw the house that we are buying, Camille did an excellent job in picking it out. I really like it. I even dreamed about it last night :)

Now let me go into a little more detail about the food. We ate at Pazzo! in Flower Mound, TX. I had the Contadino (Tasteful farmer). Which consisted of Tomatoe sauce, mozzarella, sauteed Italian sausage, flame roasted corn and bell peppers, spicy salami extra virgin olive oil. The pizza crust was awesome, I love thin and crispy crust, this i by far the best I've ever had at a restraunt. The toppings were also really good, I was surprised that roasted corn tasted so well on a pizza. Overall 5 stars from me.

This is what I dreamed the other night. My friend Gary did the excellent art work for me.

In case I failed to mention it, we might just be moving to Flower Mound, thats still in the DFW metromess in case your not a local. When I called Camille Sunday to let here know I was on my way home from the big hunt, she told me she had found us the perfect house and had put a contract on it. Wow, ok thats cool. I learned along time ago that when she is happy I am happy. So pending a postive inspection on Friday we might be first time home owners soon.

We have been looking in Flower Mound for a few weeks and I just did a little research to see what kind of community it is. I know a couple of people there, but I want let them scare me away :)

"Being ranked as the number one hottest city in Texas and the number two hottest city in the entire western United States with a population under 100,000 is a major accomplishment," - Mayor Lori DeLuca said in an Interview.

Thats gotta be a good thing right?

Well how is the crime there?

*A kitchen knife, valued at $20, was stolen Tuesday on the 2300 block of Henley Court. - a few more police reports for this week.

That reads like an old time news paper "Mr. Taylors third cousin from the East is in town for 5 days this week"..

Other Flower Mound Information
The town is going to have an online auction. This should be fun.

Flower Mound Map even has aerial photos. This is very well done.

Well as much as I enjoyed the holidays and such, I really didn't get that much work done on the tween days. The last 1.5 days at work ( I was off 0.5 on Monday) I got more done than the 5 days of work during the last 2 weeks of holiday time.

I really came in refreshed and have been kicking butt and getting my major projects back in order. I think that about every 2 months I should have a week off. I bet from a productivity stand point that it would be worth it for the company, but who would agree to that. Anyway back to kicking butt.

Well I've spent the last 2 evenings taking defensive driving at I Drive Safely. Overall it was probably better than have to go sit through a class, but there is no way you can do it in 6 hours. With lag and all there practice question it took more like 8 hours. Anyway now my evenings can return to normally geeky things.

Well once again I'm home (now at work) from a successful trip to the field. Although conditions were terrible for deer hunting (hot, full moon, then cold front), I managed to bag my final doe of the season. I think we have plenty of deer meat for the year. I've also been thinking about how lucky I am to have a wife, who has not once complained about all the time I've spent in the field this season. I started hunting Sept. 1 and have hunted almost every other weekend on average and not once has she complained. I bet there aren't that many wives in the world who have been that great. Thanks Honey.

Now its time to get to work, I have a fairly busy next few weeks as I attempt to finish a project in time for training and a presentation on the 21st.

Well this is the last weekend of the season. I'm off in just a few minutes. Wish me luck I have 1 buck tag and 2 doe tags left.

Camille and I brought in the new year with Kevin and Merrin last night. We had lots of fun and didn't even get intoxicated enough to embarsse the wife. At least I don't think I did :). So just incase some pictures happen to show up with me on the floor with the dogs, it wasn't be cause of the Pearl Light. :)

I can't believe its 2004. Have a happy new year.

Well there just isn't much going on around here IT wise today. But thats ok. I've got one gigantic printer to move and a couple of network cables to punchdown. Thats it. I've given up any hope of doing any database development this week.

I think I will work on the multiboot computer some, maybe dump a few of the old linux installs and prep it for fresh new one. I need to write some php for the SignServer and maybe I can find a digital camera (mine are at home) and take a picture of the finished project.

It should be a normal, day before the holidays day.

I just can't seem to build up any momentum to move forward this week. I know that I'm just days away from completing a major chuck of my current database development project, but I just can get going on it. It seems like there is always something getting in the way. Hopefully next week things will be back to normal and I can move forward. Guess I'll just flail about the rest of the day and tomorrow taking care of the small stuff.

I'll try to make the summary of the last 5 days brief, although I think I could fill several pages with the details. Early Wednesday morning we head from Dallas to Tyler to spend the day and night at Camilles parents. Camille made the dressing, I made the carrots and green bean dishes, that I'm getting famous for :), here sister made stuffing and sweet potatoes, and Greenburg made the turkey. It was a great meal and we decided that I should be the standard Christmas meal for years to come. After that we all exchanged gifts and had some homemade muscadine wine.

Thursday morning we got up and head South and East to Joaquin for Christmas day with my family. We made it just in time for Christmas Gumbo. Then we did our gift exchange. I think everybody had a good time and got some great gifts. My dad got a 17HMR (thats a gun, in case you didn't' know) so of course the guys had to go out and sight it in and shoot it. Later I talked Camille into going duck hunting with me and we bagged one. We finished the night off with some dominoes.

Friday morning we left around 3am heading West to Ballinger to the deer lease. We got there at early and check into a nice little bed and breakfast. We had plenty of time to hunt that afternoon and bagged myself a nice young turkey. I saw several deer, but no shooters in my range.

Saturday was mostly hunting. Saturday morning, I saw several does, but not any bucks. Saturday evening I bagged a large bodied spike. We estimate the age of around 3 years old and it needed to be culled from the herd to prevent the spread of bad genetics. Thats the first one I've shot that was running so I was happy with my self.

Sunday morning my BIL bagged a really nice 9 point with a unique rack. And I saw a couple of bob cats but came back empty handed. All all that was taken care of Camille and I headed back to Dallas. It was nice to get home and I managed to get caught up on my email, rss feeds and a few shows on the TiVo. Now its a 3 day week, 2 days off and I'm heading back out to the deer lease Friday to hopefully fill out the rest of my tags.

We are home from our 5 day 1000+ mile trip, details to come soon, maybe :)

I'll try to sum up 4 days of hunting for you. We were hunting in the panhandle of Oklahoma on some of my buddies family land. The weather up there was very warm for this time of the year. All the early snow had just about melted, the temps where in the 30s for a couple of hours in the morning and up in the 50s by the end of the day. There was almost no wind at all. This was a bad combo for pheasant hunting. We saw lots of birds but were able to only get in shooting range of a few. Other than the pheasant we got into a few quail and rabbits, I had to bring home more meat than pheasant :) Overall it was a great trip and I got plenty of excercise, several miles of walking a day. We hope to make this an annual event.

I'm back in town. More details of the trip as soon as I get some what caught up.

Just a few more hours and I'll be outta here for a few days. I'm heading up to Oklahoma for a few days with Friends to Pheasant hunt. It should be a blast :)

Merrin, Kevin, Camille and myself loaded up in Kevins spiffy new car and hit Dallas for some Christmas lights. They brought the great Starbucks hot chocolate and we brought the cookies. Oh and the hats, they brought the hats, you can veiw lights with out christmas hats. They also came with gifts, guess who got a nice selection of Texas brews :)

Another Monday is here. The morning has been filled with several support calls. Mostly easy stuff. My main problem was being able to start a remote xapp from the console. Sometime over the weekend Konqueror crashed on the signserver. It took some research, but I figured out if once I log in remotely i can:

sign@signserver$export DISPLAY=localhost:0

Then i can launch konqueror and it will come up like normal. Now what I really need todo is create something that will make sure konqueror is always running.

I tried using init, which creates a persistent daemon, but that doesn't work for me, it can't find the display. Next I tried a easy script:

$while : ; do kstart --fullscreen konqueror --profile fullscreen; sleep 60; done

That just started up a new screen every 60 seconds, so had to scrap that one. I'm sure the solution is some where in a cron job that i haven't written yet :) But that can hold til later I've got to get some database work done now, its a short week for me, more on that later.

It was a good weekend. Even with the ducking hunting gone wild. Some friends were in town from back home so we all headed out to Texana Grill to eat and get caught up Saturday night. Sunday was filled with cooking and some shopping. Not much tech stuff, but I think Its getting time to replace the old UPS's.

What a great way to wake up, Saddam has been captured. Like always, Kevin sums it up best.

I left the house at 3am this morning, meetup with my hunting buddy at 4am and we headed to Lake Kaufman. About 5:05 one of the leaf springs broke on the boat trailer and we managed to completly rip the axel off with out even knowing it. It was muddy and we thought the road was just sticky not that we were pull up a swath of mud. So there was nothing we could do since everyone was asleep. So we decided to hunt off the bank near the boat ramp. We put out just a few decoys and managed to shot 5 teal, and thats about all we saw. Once we got to normal people hours he dad brought out an 18 foot trailer and we loaded every thing up and hauled it back to his place. I got back home around 4, whew what a day.

Well its finally done, the Linux Sign Server is completed, well 99% anyway. They are supposed to be mounting the LCD and cutting holes in the wall etc later today. It turned out to be a little more work than expected, and I was surprised that I found very little documentation of people who have tried this before. Anyway I'm glad that its complete. My notes are there for others and if i need them in the future.

I think I could take this knowledge and utilize it with one of my iOpeners to create a nice slideshow/electronic picture device. I have 2 of them that I could use, but that's for another day.

Its been a heck of a weekend thus far, and its only Sunday morning.

Friday night was a blast, you can read about it from Kevins veiewpoint, or Merrins or Camilles. For me I had a blast, and I think that I'm missing out on lots of important Pop Culture :)

Last night Camille and I went to a white elephant party. It was fun, I got this great leg humping dog, I'll have to upload a video clip :)

There was also lots of cleaning and such. I cooked a lot of cookies, recipes to come soon.

So its been several days since I've had an actual entry, that could be good or bad ;)

Anyway Thanksgiving was great. We spent the day at Camilles grandparents with a very small group of her family there. It was a lot of fun, her grandfather is really good at telling stories. We even managed to get about an hour of DV or her grandmother and grandfather telling about there lives. Hopefully we can get even more tape, her grandfather has so many funny stories that not even some of his own family has heard. I also hit his garden for a mess of turnip greens to take home.

We spend a day or so with Camilles parents in Tyler. We had a good time doing the normal things you do.

Next we headed down to Joaquin for a day or so. My mom cooked up the turnip greens that I brought from Camilles grandfathers, there is nothing like some fresh greens. I also got in a little duck hunting and bagged my first to wood ducks of the season.

Other than that, its been lots and lots of work lately.

Looks like things are moving ahead on the Linux Sign project I talked about last week.

1. PC - The PC i had on hand turned out to be on its last leg, so I ordered a IBM 450 for $79. Very cheap and these have worked great with linux for me in the past.
2. Monitor - Purchasing odered a Kogi 17" LCD from Amazon for $300 after rebates. This is on my desk and is really nice.
3. Linux - I'm not sure exactly what distro I'm gonna go with, Mandrake 9.2 or Redhat 9 or both in the running. This might also be a great time to try a Gentoo install. I found a old Linux as a Kiosk how to that might have some good tips in it.
4. Kiosk Mode - Chad pointed me to Mozilla as a Kisok and that is probably the way I'm gonna go.

Things are looking good, Marketing is working on the images which will be loaded in the browser which will welcome our guest. Hopefully that box will be here the middle of next week.

Its been quite a weekend so far. Saturday Camille and I did a little christmas shopping. Of course a got a few new kitchen gadgets out of the deal :) We had lunch at the Atlanta Bread Company, it was my first time there. I had a Honey Maple Ham on sourdough and would have it again, if I was in that neck of the woods.

Saturday afternoon we meet up with our friends Pat & Karen for supper at the All Good Cafe. I had the king ranch chicken, it was good, but not as good as Camille's. After that we headed down the road to the new Gilleys Dallas to see the Randy Rogers Band. It was a great show and I can say i own all there CDs :) I think fun was had by all.

We have also watched several of our new movies. Eight Crazy Nights, Finding Nemo and Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life.

As for cooking, not much has been done on that front. I have made a half dozen of Alton Browns ultimate grilled cheese sandwiches. Man they are good. I do have a little something planned for tonight, but more on that later.

Here a a few pics from last night:

What a day. My laptop at work has been acting up lately, and today I was finally forced to reinstall it. Its all done but it took a big chunk of my time getting it. But the network driver is now working and not being flaky and now my palm syncs again. So its a good thing. I'm looking forward to not doing much for the next 2 days, hope you have a good weekend also.

Update: I take some of that back, the network card is still not right, dropping the connection alot and yes I tried a different connection on a different patch cord and even on a different switch. Looks like i'm gonna have to call Gateway and see if i can get a replacement, thats gonna be fun..

What a day, and week so far. I've been on a database roll all week, i've been working late everynight since Camille is in LA and leaving extra early every morning, get to work around 7am, not bad considering its a long drive for me. I've been busy from arrival to departure, the days have flown by and the rest of the week looks the same. Camille is coming home a day early so i won't be working late tomorrow night. Overall its been a super productive week at work, hope yours is the same. Looks like we will be at home for the weekend, which is good since there is a stack of amazon goodies that need to be delt with.

I'm at home today. I've been putting together paperwork for our mortgage stuff. I really need the extra rest also, this damn cold that I've picked up is really starting to work on me. I've also canceled my deer hunting trip for the weekend. Nothing but rest and some cleaning until Monday.

Update: What a day, I got everything done mostly. There is still some cleaning left for tomorrow, but thats what weekends are far. I see that we need to hit the store also, I really feel like doing some cooking, but I need rest so I'm not gonna overdo anything. Hope you all have a great weekend.

Its been a pretty busy week here at the office. Getting Firebird working with our application has been the greatest accomplishment. The second great accomplishment was sorting a a quick report / database /application setting issue. That took a lot of time, but thanks to some good support from our vendor, we got it all worked out. I actually worked for them for several years, and I miss the team up and problem solving that occured there, this was a great flashback.

Now its back to some development and a few database changes for testing purposes. I'm off tomorrow (more on that later) so I have to do some regular Friday hardware stuff this afternoon. This time I actually have been notified 2 days in advance that we have a new employee coming.

Speaking of employees, we have had several new ones and several temps in over the last week. I guess thats an indicator that things are picking up for us.

I also started a new training class this week. I train 3 groups of people 2 days a week (thats 6 class a week). Thats going well so far. I'm also sitting in on a traing class aimed at our estimators and project managers so I can get a little better feel of how they do some things.

I noticed that over the weekend my Win2K / BackupExec box rebooted itself. It had and uptime of 442 days, thats an amazing feat in the windows world if you ask me. I wonder if anyone has had a box up longer than that. Now that the uptime is reset I'll do some updates and patches and hopefully it will run for another year+.

Well due to the nasty weather and a sky full of clouds we were unable to see the lunar eclipse tonight. It seems that the last several astronomical events have all been blocked by clouds here in Texas.

We are in Joaquin (East Texas) for the weekend. I hit the field early this morning and didn't see a deer. It was rainy and kinda cold so I passed on the afternoon. My dad is a little sick, so I didn't want him to get out in the weather either. We are also passing on the evening hunt. Thats ok though, I'm heading to west Texas next weekend with my BIL.

I just realized that my account here only had about 4 megs left, so I dumped several of the albums from the gallery, about 50 megs worth. I hope they weren't anybodys favorites. I'm thinking that I may actually redo all the gallery on a server hosted at home and use a redirect to point to it. We shall see.

I think I'm not a morning person. I get up early get stuff done and head off to work just fine, no problems there. As long as you don't talk to me and I don't talk to you before I have coffee and/or a ReBull, i'm fine. I've not always been this way but lately I find my self grumpy and stuff to Camille early in the mornings. So Camille i'm sorry for being a grumpy ass...

Yesterday for lunch I gave the new Wendy's Wild Mountain Bacon Cheeseburger a try. What makes a Wild Mountain burger? All you have to do is add some "hot and smoky southwestern pepper sauce". I honestly did get any additional heat from this or any smoky taste. I would not recommend this to anyone, it seems like a almost flavorless sauce for an extra .50. But I do think that i would probably be OK on the chicken sandwich. Overall a 2 out of 5 from me.

Here is another one we hit after deer hunting last week. It seemed to be a popular joint with some other hunters, so full camo is welcome. We decided to get the KC Steak for 4. What this consisted of was a huge plate of KC steaks cut up on a platter served with au jus and vegies sauted in garlic, with sides of baked potatoes. The meat was cooked perfectly and the flavor and seasoning they used was great. They had slightly to much garlic for one in the party, but nobody else seemed to mind. It was a great value for the price, and I would go back here also. I give it a 4 out of 5.

While deer hunting last week I had the pleasure of eating at Alejandras Restaurante on two separate occasions.
The first meal I had there was the Carne Guisada served with rice and beans. This is some really good authentic Mexican food. This was the best Carne Guisada I've ever had, and I've had a lot. Its a very small place with a down home relaxed feel. We went in straight from the hunt and didn't feel out of place at all.

The second meal I had was a grilled chicken sandwich. While they are primarily a Mexican restaurant, they do have a selection of American foods to choose from. This sandwich was really good. Overall I would give them a 4 or 5 score. And I'm sure I'll be eating there again next time I'm in Ballinger.

I meant to post this one last week, but I'm still catching up.

Last Thursday night Camille and I headed down to our local Two Rows Restaurant and Brewery in Addison. Thursday nights are Rib and Pint night. I have a two rows pint glass so I get $1 pints from 6 to 11, and the ribs are on special.

Camille and I both got half a rack of there ribs. We both thought they were good. We have had a problem finding good ribs in the area and while these weren't as good as home cooked, there about the best that we have had in a restaurant. They were very tender and had a good flavor, the only real draw back was a sweet sauce that they had on them. This trip i also tried the Route 66 Amber ale for the first time. It was very smooth and had a little pleasant aftertaste. The service, like always, was excellent. I would recommend the ribs if your in the area. This meal I give a 4 out of 5 stars.

Camille and I went to The Keg Steakhouse and Bar last night. This one is on Park and the Tollway. First off I was disappointed that they didn't have there own beer. I guess that the words "The Keg", made me think that they would, my mistake. The atmosphere was that of a very nice steakhouse not exactly what we were expecting when we headed there. The service was very good also.

Now lets get to the food. We started with and appetizer of scallops wrapped in bacon. This turned out to be very good. Camille ordered the small prime rib which came with fried onion strings, mashed potatoes, a small cup of au jus and a small cup of horseradish. I had the same small prime rib and it came with a side of cajun shrimp and mashed potatoes. The shrimp where 9 black tiger shrimp sauted with garlic butter then tossed with a spicy cajun sauce, that's there description. Lets start with the prime rib, it was very tender and cooked to perfection. The main problem was that there wasn't much flavor at all, as Camille described it, it tasted like it had been boiled for a while. We were both disappointed with our meat. Camille liked her potatoes, I thought mine tasted a little doughy. My shrimp were not that great either, they had that over cooked shrimp taste. The highlight of my meal was the Shiner Bock. For dessert we had the lemon cheesecake in a pastry shell, sprinkled with cinnamon and server with a little caramel and ice cream. I also had a Spanish coffee. The the dessert wasn't that bad, but its not something we would order again.

Overall we decided that we would probably never go back. It was a fairly expensive meal and wasn't a good value for the bland uninspired food that we received. Overall I give it only 2 of 5 stars.

Opening weekend was a blast we arrived at the lease Friday morning. There were a few minor things todo like setting up some blinds and some camo around. Saturday morning I was in my blind around 4:45am, there wasn't much activity that morning. I saw maybe 5 or 6 does, all in range, but I didn't bag anything, I was waiting on a buck.

Saturday evening I got to my blind about 4PM, and there were already 3 deer grazing on some wheat as I arrived. It took a while before they finally got far enough a way to allow me to get in my blind. About 5PM the deer start coming on to the field from everywhere. Mostly does and young deer. I did see a few smaller bucks. I started counting and counted 51 on the field. I counted again to make sure I wasn't double counting. Thats a whole lot of deer in one place. Still no big bucks, right at dark almost 2 late to shot I took a small deer for the sake of having some meat to return home with. One of the other guys (there were 4 of us) took a pretty good 8 point.

Sunday morning I got to my blind a little later, maybe 5:15. There were already deer on the field that I could see. I almost had a skunk try to come in the blind also. I had pretty much the same 5 or 6 deer from the morning before come out. I also saw a group of turkeys, but they were out of my range to shoot. By 7:50 there were 4 deer on the ground from the others, so I left the blind to help load them up.

Sunday evening was the same as Saturday evening with one exception. There was a really nice 6 point buck that came maybe 70 yards from my blind. I would guess that the rack was at least 16" inside and it was fairly tall. He will be a really nice deer for next year so I let him walk, we are trying not to bag anything under 8 points. There was also another smaller 6 point on the field later. Still no big buck and I decided not to take a doe, since I was driving back to Dallas that night.

All in all it was probably one of the best opening weekends ever. The number deer I saw was incredible. I still need to take 2 more does to help out on the out of control population, and I'm still holding out on a big buck.

I think they sould rename Quick Reports to NotSoQuick Reports. I've been trying to create a report since yesterday and have finally got it done. So now our estimating system that is moving into manufacturing can now produce a report very simular to existing manufacturing reports. Its been kicking my ass, but now its done. Its taken my full attention all day, and now I noticed that the day is almost over!

I figure I'm about 35% caught up with everything from being away, which is why I still havent' done so many things i need to. There are lots of things going on at work also that are keeping me very focused on work. I think tonight I'll be able to catch up with everything, just in time to be gone for the weekend to hunt :).

I'm back home and at work. Our T1 has been down since Wendsday noonish. AT&T said is was equipment so we brought in 2 new of everything and nothing made a difference, they have a line problem some where. We are running our mulitmillion dollar company on a 26k dialup connection now. Of course thats terminals only all pcs are down, but mine. I'm dialed in through the VPN. Talk about a black monday to come back to.

The hunting trip was good, more details soon.

I helped a friend from work work on his dog castle last night after work. He first called it a dog house , but this thing is huge. I'm sure the neighbors really loved the hammering and power tools up until about 10 last night :) Once this thing is complete I'll post some photos. Oh, I'm not at work today, I'm off the rest of the week and heading out of town early in the morning.

Being busy at work day in and day out is good, but it can also allow you to fall behind on cutting edge and new technologies. Since I use OS X mainly at home these days, my win2k box and linux boxes just set there and do there jobs. I don't play with them outside of normal tasks. So I'm making a list of things I need to get caught up on with technology.

Longhorn - Matt has a great set of links here to pursue.
Windows Server 2003
Windows Small Business Server 2003
Windows XP - I've used this some and fixed it some, but really should spend osme more time learning my way around it.
Office XP - ditto the Windows XP comments.
Office 2003
Backupexe 9.x
Mandrake 9.2 - I have tried several times to download this via the club members bittorrent but never with any luck.
Redhat Beta - Luckily I'm only one version behind on this one :)
OS X Panther - I'm gonna give this one a few more weeks to see how the bugs shake out.

I'm sure there is more, thats quite a list good thing winter is getting here, of course I'll be hunting every weekend so maybe I want ever get caught up.

Wow, another busy day like yesterday. I got up extra early this morning to take my truck in for new tires, brakes and a front end alignment. When I got to work there were terminals and printers down all over the place. Looks like one of the AS400's screwed up during the night. I also have had lots of little fires to put out. Only 1 more day this week for me then its 4 days in a row off! Now at least the rest of the afternoon looks good.

3 days out of the office always leaves lots of work to deal with on the return. I'm finally taking a breather before all the afternoon meetings start. Its been a heck of a busy day thus far, and as much as I've gotten done, I feel like I haven't put a dent in it.

Well we are back home, it'll be nice sleeping in my own bed for a change. Camille is still sick, but is contacting her doctor first thing in the morning. Lets hope she gets healed up, I'm scheduled to be out of town Thrusday - Sunday, if she is ok that is.

What a day. I stayed up most of the night making sure Camille was still breathing. She woke me up a little past midnight and could hardly breath. I put on some clothes and was ready to head to the hospital, but she started breathing ok. It was pretty scary, she is sick, but she won't take time off to heal herself. For some reason she feels her job is more important than her health and that of the baby, and i can't change her mind.

When we got in from Houston yesterday there was a message that my great Aunt died. She was in her 90's and lived a long life. Just 3 weeks ago they found cancer. It didn't take long at all. Not having any funeral type clothes or time to get any, I didn't go, but my parents did.

To top it all off we got some other news about another one of Camilles family members that is adding extra worries and stress. We are heading there tomorrow. So its gonna make for a long tiring weekend/week.

Overall, even with all the bad we still had a good day. My nephew is home from the hospital, he is sore, but recovering. I made a huge lunch for everybody and a cake, recipes to come soon.

Another day another town. My nephews surgery when well and he is recovering. Its been a long tiring day and we hope things return to normal soon.

So I woke up in Nashville, flew to Houston then to Dallas. Then drove back to Houston. Lots of miles today, I'm sure there is plenty to get caught up on but I'm a little tired now.

I'm in Nashville on business, I'll be home tomorrow night, just in time to leave for Houston. Travel master.

So I miss:
1. My Wife (mushy,mushy) & Mini Cooper
2. My Powerbook, specifically NetNewsWire
3. My TiVo, this hotel doesn't have one :)

Looks like sometime since Friday my comments are broke, they accept the second securtiy code, but not the first for some reason. *sigh* Something else to have to jack with on a Monday.

The weekend is half over. Last night I stayed at a friends house and played Backyard Wrestling on PS till 4:30am. Today we went to a Shelby's for Mollys first birthday party. That was followed by an afternoon nap. Camille and I bought Trival Pursuit DVD edition today and we played a game tonight. Its very fun. If your in the market for some new board games Toy's R Us is running buy one get one free on lots of there games.

I'm glad the week is over, all the new hardware here at work is at place. Looks like everybody is happy, at least until Monday. Now its off to the driving range to give this golf thing another try. I'm not so good at it, but at least its a good stress reliever.

After work yesterday I headed out to the driving range with a buddy from work. This was only my second time on the range, and I really, really suck. But I do think it would be fun to learn a little bit more about golf. The drivinging range is close to work and on the way home, so it would be easy to swing by alot and maybe I will.

After that we headed back to his place where I played some chess with him and his wife. This was my first person to person chess game ever. I can see that becoming a new addiction, I really enjoyed it. I've read the rules and played against the computer some, but it was very different face to face.

The main project for today will be exporting lots of data from some lotus notes databases to access so it can be mail merged. I've done it in the past, its just been a while.

The new switch came in this morning, hopefully I will get it installed this after noon. I know that to most large IT departments, this is a regular occurance. Not around here, I've been trying to get a new switch for about 8 months, since there is only 1 free port open on the ones we already have. When I got the 4 new machines last week and they only hold up was a switch, some asses got chewed (not mine) and a new one was ordered.

Now I should be all set to setup the machines on Friday. I feel kinda bad for the 2 new folks that have been waiting 3 weeks for there computers, but its not my fault that their bosses didn't order there computers, until after they had been here for 2 weeks...

Today is turned in a a Sysadmin type day. I've need to update the linux servers for weeks now, just haven't had time. Its all coming together now. I've also finished up setting up the 4 new pcs, just waiting for the new switch to come in. Its 2 already and the day is still flying.

I've already cleaned up about 50 spams in my comments today. Now i'm getting spam email from with in Tribe.net. Not from them but through there system, this sux. Luckily they have already unsubscribed the dude, but I'm sure it will happen again.

What a weekend I'll try to sum in up.

The inlaws came up Friday.
I cooked crazy amounts of food.
I watched way to much TV, I actually had 1 show left on the TiVo.
I read a small stack of comic books that have been waiting for me.
I finished my RoIo database and entered everything I have to date.
I archived several VCD's that made.
And the list goes on....

Note To Self: Sticking index finger into Volcano II fan at full speed is a bad idea.

I think I have most of the blood off the wall and power supply, man that hurt.

Gigs that is. I stopped by Frys after work and go myself a new 250gig drive. $249 - 100 worth of mail in = 149 not bad at all.

Looks like Jim has a good idea!. You can get a hot+cold h2o dispenser for $99 at Home depot and find a local place to pick up your water on the cheap. We recently added a filter on our tap, but having instant hot and cold sounds very appealing to me.

I just had the crap scared out of my by Mail.app on the power book. I started it up and it lost all the accounts I had set up. I of course feared the worst. So I went ahead and setup my account back up, nothing was lost but the inbox files. Whew al the rules and sub folders were still there. Getting the inbox back was a simple as importing it back in. All in all a 1 minute support job, but man was I worried at first. Thats the first breakage I've had with Mac software and I'm glad it was easy to fix.

I had todo a install of NT4.0 + apps on a failed workstation today. I'd fogot how different NT4 is from 2k or XP. It really has come along way in some areas. The amazing thing is how must faster 4.0 boots than 2k on the same machine. Its just seconds from power up to desktop on 4.0. On top of that its still stable except for the hard drive going out this machine hasn't had a single problem since it was purchased way back in 99 I think.

I'm having an Evil IT Guy day.

We just received in 4 new computers and printers. Seems like somebody forgot to mention this to me. I was able to confiscate them all before they got distributed. To bad I haven't got any time set aside to configure them. Its gonna be at least 2 weeks before i even have time to open the boxes. In reality I should be able to get them all configured on Friday. The main problem is that all the switches are full, and they have turned down the RPA's to get another one. So they will have nice non connected PC for the 2 new people. *sigh* sometimes I wonder how we manage to get any thing to work around here.

I also got a replacement hard drive in, but this one got delivered to the users instead of me. So I got a call, can you come install this today. sure I'll be right down that was 2 hours ago. Thats a job for tomorrow morning lets hope that cloning goes smooth.

Happy Techies Day all you techies out there.

We went to see Kickstand at the Hooters in Plano last night. It was the 20th anniversary of the place. We didn't stay for the whole show (to much smoke for C) but did stay long enough to here a few new songs from there soon to be released new CD. It was fun.

I just got a call from our Dallas service center.
Person: "My new laptop is here but i can't conect to HFA".
Me: "You got a new laptop?
Person: "Yeah to replace the stolen one."
Me: "Your laptop was stolen?"
Person: "Yeah didn't they tell you the office was broken into about a month ago"
Me: "Nope"

Anyway bottom line is at some point the management decided to keep this secret. And ordered a new replacement latptop, of course with out all our software and network setup its not gonna work. So now the cat is out of the bag and I've got to go there first thing in the morning on my way to work. I love the communications in this company. Do they really think they can slip in a new PC with out me knowing?

Just like every other year cooler weather seems to bring in new work for me. I've had a couple of really good meetings over the last week. Lots of new directions and plans. If got tons of work todo and thats good. Its been a fairly slow summer and now things are back up to a faster pace. There is still change in the wind.

I can't believe the weekend is already gone, where did it go? I did manage to get a few projects done, working with the database part of Appleworks 6 is pretty simple. I did complete my first of many organization projects.

I also cooked up 2 pretty good meals, details at the kitchen blog. I also managed to catch up on all the shows on my TiVo. Now just a few more things before bed and a fresh week of work.

Camille, Shelby, Merrin and Kevin all went to the Texas State Fair last night. It was a blast my first on in Texas. The weirest thing I had was either the fried Oreos or the fried Twinkie. I have some pictures that I need to upload soon.

Looks like I've discovered why my link dump is messed up. For some reason my host has disabled my shell access so rysnc isn't working. *sigh* Its always something isn't it. Now I just have wait until they fix that.

Update: Looks like my shell is back up, just nothing works, no perl, no crontab, etc. My poor links ;)

Camille and I went to the brand new TwoRows` on the Tollway in Addison. She had her standard Chicken Tenders and I had the Wild Red Grilled Chicken Tenders and a wheat beer. Both meals were great and the beer was good. I'm sure we will be going back, they have a huge menu.

This morning I was thinking (still thinking) about picking up a new FRS radio before deer season. Mine is old and bulky and broken. I've decided that I want one with VOX abilty so i can use it with a headset.

What would be cool if there were some sort of Bluetooth universal connector that you could use with a FRS radio that would allow it to work with bluetooth headset used for a cell phone. If it were universal it could also be used on my iPod.

I guess this isn't practical or there is not enough power in the audio jack because its not been done, i'm no electrical engineer, just a dreamer :). I guess I'll stick with a wired version.

Yesterday I recieved a call from the wife of one of my friends. His son, who was my age, took his own life. Its hard to imagine, I left work yesterday and stayed with him until they left for the airport. My thoughts are with his family. What a hard thing to have to go through.

I just had the most positive meeting I've had in years at work. I have that fresh "I just started working here" feeling again. Wow, I'm also in a little bit of shock.

We the recent news of the mini-cooper (thanks Merrin) plans are changing. Camille and I are working through the details but so far it looks like the Coopers will be in Dallas for a few more years.

Looks like they have fixed my connection downspeed, for now anyway. But u/l isn't looking that fast:

file: severn2-binary-iso
| size: 1,959,821,887 (2 GB)
| dest: /home/nf0/severn2-binary-iso
| progress: __________________________________________________________________
| status: finishing in 9:18:17 (0.5%)
| dl speed: 78.0 KB/s
| ul speed: 3.3 KB/s
| error(s):

Well we are finally back online at home, here are the awesome results:
2003-09-29 21:52:38 EST: 3 / 63
Your download speed : 3278 bps, or 3 kbps.
A 0.4 KB/sec transfer rate.
Your upload speed : 63271 bps, or 63 kbps

As you can tell, we can run data faster than this. According to other people at broadband test this is good for Interquest. This really blows, my dialup is faster. Guess I'll spend even more time with customer service, when they open back up and see whats up. Camille is even more pissed than I am :(

Look what I can do :)

I got a card in the mail that it was time to register our cat again. This time all I had todo was goto Pet Data and pay it online. Wow that was easy.

If your in the city of Dallas you can also pay your tickets online, not that I've tried it myself or anything.

Looks like we can count on another night with out high speed at the house. I wonder what could cause 50+ properties to go down and why they just want tell me when i ask.

Anyway I guess its good for other projects last night I compiled the video my buddy took of the hunt last weekend and made a DVD out of it. I've got several other projects like that pending. So I guess instead of goofing off i can get some real stuff done.

Last night after getting home about 7:30 I noticed the internet connect was flakey, then stopped work. A call to the support center later, and we were/are 1 of about 50 properties down. So who knows when thats gonna be fixed.

I've always tended to keep my computers very organized. There is nothing worse than not being able to find a file when you need it. So for as long as I can remember everything has had its place. Its not often that I can find something that I know I have.

Since moving mainly to a powerbook at home none of that has changed. I keep it organized as well. But I have discovered that you can go way overboard, and I like it. Lately I've been on a kick with iTunes. I've been slowly going through my albums to make sure all the data is correct. I've been ripping my CD's to mp3 for several years now, and things have changed. Better tags, more information etc. I just want to make sure its all correct. And I've been adding Album covers also. Its quite an obsession to make sure things are correct.

This love of organization spills over in to iView Media Pro, where once again you can go over board. Not only do you have all the exif info from the pictures, but you can categorize, add notes, keywords, location data, etc. So after each shoot, I HAVE to get all this data in place. I love it. iPhoto, which is mainly used for snapshots these days lets me do this to some degree, so I do.

Then there is Address book. I spend a little time a week making sure things are up to date. My latest craze is putting pictures into match with names. I love this.

I'm sure this hasn't developed into a full blown addiction yet, but its getting close. One side benefit is that its spilling over into home life. This is great for me, I love the cleanliness and the organized fell of the house, but I don't think Camille is digging me working in the Kitchen at midnight because something is out of place.

I looks like I could rent a range of camera lenses from Dallas Rentals. For a little money a day I could try some lens for a weekend shot with out forking out the big bucks, of course that means not breaking it. This could be a good way todo instead of dropping 1500 on a lens. Plus these are much higher quality. Something to ponder.

Its been a couple of days, so here is the run down. We headed down to Ballinger Friday night after work. Its about 4.5 hours and the trip was so much faster with a buddy along. We checked in to the Ballinger Inn, its not that great but for $40 a night what do you expect.

Saturday morning we were up bright and early around 5:30am. Packed up our gear, stopped for coffee and headed out. We hunted the morning away and bagged very few birds. The weather had changed from the forecast and that seamed to effect things. On the lease that morning we saw some turkeys, rabbits, skunks and some owls. Once we got done hunting, i showed my buddy around the lease. He had his DV cam so we played hunting show/national geographic documenting stuff. It may sound silly but its great fun. We most have flushed 10 or 12 coveys of quail during this adventure, lucky for them season isn't open til November. We also watched several deer and a flock of 40 or 50 turkeys for a while. The highlight of the adventure was finding a Burrowing Ground Owl nest. We didn't mess with it, but I'm planning a photographic shoot there once I get my new lens. The little owl didn't hang around long, but this was the first one I've seen in the wild instead of the zoo.

Saturday evening was a much better hunt, we bagged several more birds. It was still much slower than last weekend. According to the local folks, nobody was having any luck.

Sunday morning we planned a quick hunt since things were slow. Bagged just a few. I took advantage of the slowness and did a little pre-deer season scouting. I located several rubs and we came home with 3 shed antlers. After that I put out 8 bags of deer corn and we loaded up and headed back to Dallas.

Overall the trip was a blast even with small bag of birds, we enjoyed the time in the field. The tape should be fun to watch. I maybe able to get in one more dove hunt before deer season starts but I'm not sure yet.

And of course Here are some photos.

I had a great super busy day at work, followed by a super busy night here. I did manage to run the OS X 10.2.8 update. I still have some catching up todo. I hope your day was slower paced than mine!

I'm back from another weekend in the field. I've got lots to do and get caught up on. I'll work on a complete report later. Its just good to be home.

I gave myself a haircut last night. Its alot harder than I thought it would be. When I say haircut , what i actually did was take a #1 guard and buzzed my head. Still a difficult task when you don't have a mirror you have to go by feel. At one point i had to hook the DV camera up by firewire so i could see the back of my head on my computer to make sure i didn't miss anything. I think it turned out nice. See what happens when your wife is gone :)

Today was one of the busiest days I've had around the office for a while. That was good, it made time just fly by.

Tonights Enterprise and Jake 2.0 were both much better than last weeks. No spoilers here, I really enjoyed them both.

Just 2 more days of work this week, and it'll be time for another weekend of hunting, this time with snake proof boots and a buddy. Should be fun.

I went to the Dallas Camera Club meeting tonight. It was kinda fun a meet a few nice people. I look forward to going back. I'm trying to get out of the anti-social phase i've been in the last couple of years.

Tonights presentation was of some of the recent field trips. I skipped out early so I would be home when Camille got back from Atlanta, so I missed some of it. There are all kinds of photographers, good and not so good. As long as you enjoy doing it I guess it doesn't really matter. I'm not that great myself but I like trying.

This is one way that you should not start your day.

• freshmeat.net: Usermin 1.040
• freshmeat.net: Webmin 1.110
• Science Fiction Movie and TV Reviews
• macosxhints - Fix Apple's X11 to allow remote use of Mac X11 apps
• iViewMediaPro2Mail 2.0 - VersionTracker
• Hybrid Rocket Motor for X Prize Entry SpaceShipOne Tested
• MacSlash | TV To DVD With EyeTV
• Waterfall releases iVideo to organize movies | MacNN News
• MPEG2 Works 2.0.1 - MacUpdate
• TopoDraw 1.0 - MacUpdate
• Link2GPS 1.0 - MacUpdate
• Yahoo! News - Hitler's Alpine retreat lures tourists
• BBC NEWS | Europe | German neo-Nazi threat 'rising'
• BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Hundreds mourn Hitler's film-maker
• O'Reilly Network: Email Encryption for OS X [Sep. 10, 2003]

I've got lots of new stuff from Amazon to help me through the week.
Alias: Season 1
2004 Photographer's Market
Classic Albums - Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of Moon

Here is the breif round up. The dove hunt when pretty good, I got my limit. I also bagged a big rattlesnake and a little one. Sentive viewers may not want to see the pics.

I'm back, nothing like coming home to find out your site and all the sites you have up for friends are screwed up. I knew that my host was changinig server soon, but I didn't get any sort of notice of the change on Friday. Also the paths were not supposed to change, but they did. So something things are still broken. I'm very pissed about the whole deal, its not the first time this has happend to me. There is still a lot of stuff broken, but i'm not fixing it right now. If I'm gonna do that, I might move to a new host anyway. I've paid through the end of the month.

So I applogize to all my friends that have there blogs here for the downtime.

I'll have my adventure docuemented soon :)

I'm heading out to west Texas at five. Its gonna be a quick trip, going down tonight about 4.5 hours drive, hunting dove hunting tomorrow morning. The putting out some deer corn and probably doing some photography. If my morning harvest is under the limit then I'll hit it again that afternoon and drive back Saturday night. This is just a warm up for next weekend :)

Its been a very busy day today, but still in the back of my mind I've been remember this same day 2 years ago. I've read lots of other sites and there thoughts between bouts of work and even after 2 years, its still strange like it happened this morning.

Well I finished all the customer update CDs and prepared them for mailing. They should go out first thing tomorrow. What a morning. I've got to make a few more for Internal database updates and that will be that.

I just started installing the latest version of the database development/Estimating Manufacturing software on my Mac via VirtualPC running Win2k. It feels funny doing this sort of thing to my mac.

What a weekend. Its so nice to have a sparkling clean house. Anyway It was mostly a lazy one around here I did manage to watch all of South Park Season 1 (again), updated the cooking blog, and the photoblog.

The most frustrating part of the weekend was of course Win2k. My Win2k box , has 1 purpose in life, capture video and store it until i need it. Friday night I noticed that all audio was out of sync. I tried everything to fix it, but decided to do a reinstall (this has happened before). It only took 3 reinstalls and every combo of drivers to get it working. It also took me until Sunday afternoon as I messed with it on and off. At least its working, but I think I'm going to start looking into a used Mac G4 to handle this task, but nothing in the near future.

I managed to fight off the urge to buy and LCD and/or 250 gig hard drive this weekend. Why? Well I really want to get a 50-500mm lens for my camera by November, so something has to slide. I did rearrange things and pulled the 19" Monitor I sold from my desk. I hook all 4 boxes to my other 19" with my KVM, this should be OK for a while. I also started re-arranging some files and did some archiving, trying to strech out my HD space for a few more weeks anyway.

This should be a pretty good week at work. The T1 is up and running, hopefully it will stay up. My biggest tasks for the week is getting a database ready and creating the installs. Once thats done and tested, then making and mailing out CD's. It leaves lots of gaps for doing other things during this process, i look forward to getting something new out.

• FAMILY GUY - The Movie!
• jobs.perl.org: Part Time Perl
• Slashdot | 'Storage' to Replace Traditional Filesystems?
• PS2 Laser Eye
• InfoWorld: IBM experiments with Socializer technology: September 05, 2003: By Paul Krill: Applications
• Kung-Log 1.5.6 - MacUpdate
• Rands In Repose: Intel Personal Server
• Raistlin's Greatest Desire
• Margaret Weis.com
• Steam Trek | Metafilter
• freshmeat.net: TipiWiki 0.3
• Cyborgs Unite!
• First Photo From New Space Telescope, SIRTF
• the Degree Confluence Project
• GeoSnapper - GPS Photography

We just got back from a trip to Bluefish & the bookstore. Man I'm stuffed we had some great food tonight. I had Toro which i always get but tonight they had some special bluefin toro, yummy. We also had a Russian Roll (Snow crab, fresh salmon, gobo, avocado, cucumber, topped with silky white tuna and black caviar) and a Cherry Roll (snow crab, fresh salmon, avocado, cucumber wrapped in soy paper, topped with fresh tuna and special sauce). For desert we had Wonton Berry Brule (layers of cripsy wonton, with fresh strawberreis, rasberries, and blackberries smothered in custard server over melted vanilla ice cream in caramel sauce). Talk about eating good tonight!

Today was the day of cleaning. I don't think the place has been this clean in a while. I'll eat of of any surface! Anyway now to enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Looks like we are back up here at work running on our backup T1. We've been down since about 1pm yesterday. I guess if you work for SWB, we'll be right there means we'll be there in about 24 hours. Anyway, now i can finally get mail and files, but with the day almost gone.... well you know.

I'm back from the field. The dove hunting season opener was pretty slow. Rain and a cold front pretty much screwed it up for us. We did managed to bag a few birds, but overall it was light. On the other hand it was great to spend 3 days in the field and see friends. West Fest was also pretty good, we are getting older i can tell :) Now for lots and lots of catching up.

West Fest Photos and Huting Photos.

Wow what a night. Looks like Kevin and Merrin had fun , maybe Merrin had to much fun. Of course I just got up myself so I'm doing great. Its great to have a wife who doesn't drink (much) so she can haul me around :) And Kevin, those Mojito's do kick ass, its going on my top 5 drink list.

The weekend that is, some of you will be enjoying a nice 3 day weekend, well not this cowboy no way. Its all about 5 days for me. Dove season starts here in Texas on Monday and I'll be enjoying that for 3 full days with a couple of my best buds and some buds light :)

We are heading up to Frisco for some stickball action to night with Kevin and Merrin and I can wait, but I will be driving the speed limit on the way, so i guess i will wait. Oh that reminds me of a joke: How is making love in a canoe and and Coors Light the same?

I win! I win! It even comes with a self addressed (not stamped) envelope.

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid....

I've sold my Samsung 19" Montior to a friend for a very good price. I will hand deliver this next week. This is my first step of getting rid of a few things and getting a few new things. I'm redoing my whole setup, simplify (i hope) things to make me more productive at home. At least thats what i keep telling myself.

I don't get it, why is it so hard for a person to click on http://internalserver/file.exe and download it? This started at 4:30 yesterday afternoon and they have just figured it out, but acording to them its from google. *sigh* These are the same kind of folks that spread junkmail and virii. "A computer on every desk" is a bad idea sometimes.

I had to go to the dentist this morning for a couple of hours. As luck would have it there was a massive power outage / surge last night here. So I'm sitting in the chair and my phone is ringing like crazy. As soon as I call in therre are servers down, computers down, blah blah. Looks like we lost power for several hours. I get here takes me oh 5 minutes to bring everything up and I'm a hero. This is one of those days when they remember why they need me :) Who is gonna do this when I'm gone? Beats me... Now that I've done my job for the day I can kick back, well not really but it sounded good.