I had to run outside at about 5:30 this morning to chase my dog around the house. He was barking his head off, and I didn't want him to disturb the neighbors. What he was barking at, I don't know. We did a couple of laps around the house before I managed to catch him, and he barked every where he went. I guess he was just telling the neighborhood to get up. It was also damn chilly outside this morning. Didn't help that I was chasing after the dog in just a t-shirt and light cotton shorts. Fall is definitely here.
My old roommate, Mike, called last night. It was great to hear from him. Being outside in the cold this morning reminded me of when we roomed together in his house back in Flagstaff. The house was pretty nice; 3 bedrooms, a huge deck, and right on the dog-leg of the 6th hole on the Country Club golf course. And the price was right (though I was always behind on giving him money for bills and such). The house was originally built as a summer cabin, and as such, wasn't insulated against the cold weather we got in Flagstaff.
Mike and I would sit in the living room, playing Nintendo (Legend of Zelda!) and would literally have blankets and comforters wrapped around us as we sat on the couch. I imagine it was a pretty strange sight: two big lumps with the wires for the controllers snaking under the blankets, and just our eyes and noses sticking out (and even then, it was debatable on the noses). It would be late November, we'd both be blue, the soda in our cups would be slushy, and you'd see our breath before we'd kick the heat on. And that's because once the heat started, it never seemed to turn off. Talk about no insulation!
At this time, we'd usually go back to my bedroom to watch TV, or movies. For some strange reason, my room was the warmest in the house. And it got warm. Toasty warm. Sit around in your shorts warm. Not that I complained too much. I was able to crack a window, and usually left it open all winter. But it wasn't unusual for someone to come visit, and find everyone else crammed into my room watching my little TV.
Heading to class last night, I decided to stop at the friendly neighborhood 7-11 to get a coke. I needed the caffiene, as I had gotten precious little sleep the night before. One of my moose (read: dogs) had decided to poop on the rug in the basement rather than go outside and get wet in the rain. At 1 a.m., I was woken up by the smell of dog poop. Wonderful. After cleaning it all up, and locking the dog in the mud room, I was wide awake, so I started to read a bit. I ended up finishing the book I was reading and didn't get back to bed until about 4. But anyhow...
So I stopped at 7-11 to get a coke. Now, I'm sure many of you have been in a 7-11, and know how they have their fountain machines set up. Cups all loaded in spring-loaded canisters, so there's always one there for you to grab, right below the fountains themselves.
Well, I go in, grab my cup of choice (only a 32 oz. Trying to cut back ;), and noticed that the other cups tried to launch out of the cup-holder canister there. I noticed that these things are right at crotch level as I wrestled to get them back in there.
You can see what's going to happen here, can't you?
So, I get them back in, all is good, load the cup up with ice, start pouring my coke, the cups in the spring-loaded canister slip, they shoot out, and wham! get me right between the legs. My legs crossed, my eyes crossed, all the while, I'm trying not to spill the coke. I managed to fill it, grab a lid and straw, and shuffle over to the register.
I thought the guy behind the counter was going to split his turban trying not to laugh at me. He mumbled sorry, gave me my change, and as soon I was headed out the store, he started to chuckle.
Next time I go to 7-11, I'm wearing a cup to protect me from their cups.
Fall is definitely in the air. While I am still wearing shorts, there was a nice chill in house when I awoke this morning. It didn't help that I left the windows open and the fan on, even though it was supposed to get down to the mid-40s. I love sleeping in the cold weather.
Things are pretty much going along as they always have, with the exception that I'm not near as busy any more. It seems to be feast or famine here at work, and seeing as how it was busier than all get out all during the summer, I don't mind a few weeks worth of famine. I can catch up on school work, and my websites. It also gives me time to do a few more things around the house, and I don't feel as tired. Unfortunately, with the lack of work goes the OT. So it looks as if I'll be trying to find a second job. Here's where we find out if my mom actually reads this journal, because if I do get another job, I won't be able to make it to her place for Thanksgiving :(
And in other news, I know have brought home yet another computer. However, it's NOT a windows machine! I have downstairs a nice, more-or-less brand new Macintosh G4. This thing is sweet. Between that and my Mac G3 Powerbook, I'm slowing moving away from the windows environment. I still use it for Games and some other stuff, but I really like the Macs. I've decided I'm just going use what is the best for each app. I'm getting Photoshop and Dreamweaver for the Mac, and seeing as how that's what I use at school, it makes sense to use them at home as well. I'll still play games on my Windows machine. And once I get my Linux box set up, I'll see about installing CVS and backing up stuff so that I don't have a repeat of my hard drive crashing with nothing, and I mean Nothing with a capital N, backed up.
No, it was not a pretty sight. I think I cried a bit.
As for the rest of the family, everything is the same. Cody still gets scolded on a regular basis for not paying attention in class, or not bringing home all his homework, or just being a 9-year-old in general. Sarah has been saying "Is tomorrow my birthday?" for the entire past month. Unfortunately, it's not until the end of THIS month. She might drive her parents crazy by that time. Gail is still working, still being supermom. And myself, well, it's the same as well: Work School Homework Housework, repeat as necessary....
One year ago, I was sitting in my manager's office watching the news unfold on the TV. The astonishment that someone could actually run into one of the tallest buildings in the world. Then the chilling horror as the second plane hit the other building. By this time, a crowd was in my managers office watching. I will never forget the collective gasp that went up when the second plane hit, and everyone realized that this was no accident.
My brother lives in New York city. He had a job interview scheduled for 9am at the World Trade Center complex. Thankfully, my brother has never been able to get up early to save his life (and I guess, it might have), and had rescheduled it for 2pm that afternoon. He actually slept through the crashes until a friend of his called to check on him. He got online and IM'd me to let me know he was ok.
I live outside of Washington D.C. After hearing that there was smoke coming from the Pentagon, they made an announcement that everyone was to go home. I've never made it home so fast.
The days events unfolded in my living room on my TV. We had friends and neighbors over, as well as my in-laws (who were supposed to leave that day and ended up spending an extra week).
Family and Friends. That's what's become important for me this past year. Spending time with my children, reading them a story before bed. Remebering to tell them, and my wife, that I love them.
A year later, and personally, not much has changed. Politically, I think Bush has lost his focus, and is starting to lose respect, among Americans and among other countries. Let's concentrate on one thing at a time, eh Dubya?
Wow...can you believe there is only 125 days left until Christmas? Ack! Quick!! Start shopping!
Heh. I know the 2 of you that are reading this are probably sittin' there in shorts (unless you're my mom) and thinking "OK, he's off his rocker". Well, OK, yeah, so I probably am. I just happened to be looking ahead in my calendar, figuring out when my classes were in such, when I decided to count the days.
One of things that bothers me about the holiday season (OK, one of many, but I'll wait until it gets closer to talk about them all) is when people ask me what I want. I have a pretty standard answer: Gift Certificates. I love getting gift certificates, because then I get to choose exactly what I want, the person shopping for me doesn't have shop for hours, and everyone is happy. Who wouldn't love getting gift certificates? I love getting gift certificates from Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, and Borders. Those are probably my favorites of the "Brick and Mortar" crew. I love Amazon gift certificates as well.
However, there are some people who just aren't happy with buying gift certificates. Those people aren't content unless they spend hours shopping for the person in question. I think it must be a gene or something. My mother-in-law is one of these types, and I think my wife is following in her footsteps. So, for those that absolutely must shop, I've created "wish lists", at both Harley-Davidson and Amazon.com. If you get me something off of one of these lists, I'm guaranteed to love it. So no worries about me not liking anything.
These lists, or more specifically, the Harley-Davidson one, serve a dual-purpose. Aside from those who want to actually buy something, it's a good way to keep track of what I want to get for my bike/HD collection. Too many times I've seen something and thought, "Oh, that'd be cool", only to be thinking "What was that again?" just a few days later. I didn't want you guys thinking I was just making lists so people could by me stuff. I mean, c'mon, I'm not THAT materialistic.
I was up late last night, watching The Green Mile and folding laundry. Folding laundry is a task I can do with minimal fuss, as long as I can watch the TV while doing it. So I usually get to fold the laundry. And I'm happy to do it, as long as there's something worth watching on. But I digress...
Anyways, I'm sitting there watching the movie and folding laundry at about 11 p.m. last night when I hear Cody get out of bed. He comes out of his room, and without really seeing me, he starts heading downstairs. I asked him where he was going, and he said he was getting some water for the clams. He stood there at the top of the stairs for a minute, while I held my silence waiting to see what he would do. When he didn't do anything for a minute or two, I told him to go back to bed. He simply turned around and climbed back into bed without any fuss.
At least he didn't feel the need to go to the store to get the dogs some dog food or anything.
My weekend was very unproductive, and goal-less. Well, I take that back; I did have one goal that I wanted to accomplish, and that was staying barefoot for all day on Sunday. And I accomplished it! Hooray for me. Other than that, I worked on the forums for my Harleyroads site, and I went to a friends house on Friday night. Taught them how to play Asshole, got them pretty torqued, and managed to get home around 3:30 in the morning. It was a lot of fun though.
OK, that was odd. I took a quick run down to the bathroom to, well, to do what you do in the bathroom. I was standing at one urinal, and guy who is on my team was standing at the other. He'd just gotten back from vacation (lucky bastard) so I welcomed him back and asked how the beach was. He said it was nice, but that he'd actually gotten back last week. Then I remembered it was a different guy on our team who was back today. By this time, we'd both zipped up and were washing our hands, when this voice came from the stalls and said "Oh, is he back?" It was our boss in the stall, doing what guys do in stalls. It was a strange moment to be sure.
Bathroom etiquette is simply odd. I mean, EVERYONE has to pee or poop at some point in their lives. Yet, whenever we're in the bathroom (at least men...I don't know if women do it any differently), it's like there's this "No Talking" sign posted. Some people abide by that sign as if it were written law, while others seem to go out of their way to flaunt their disregard for such silliness. Personally, I fall into the latter category. The people that crack me up the most are the guys that sit in the stall, and flush every time they're going to make some noise (i.e. fart). Every thirty seconds, they'll flush the toilet. C'mon, we all know you're not going THAT much. And if you are, perhaps you should see a doctor!
Well, this entry certainly did get a bit off track. Ah well. At least I didn't talk about work :)
While waiting for my pathetically slow Windows machine to build, I decided to write this entry. I did a quick bit of upkeep on the front page, namely taking off the hoopty cool fade on the buttons. As I've been using Mozilla more often, and it doesn't support that sort of thing, I found it more annoying than cool, so I did away with it.
I've also been using my Powerbook G3 a lot more. I could really get to like OS X. And at work, I burned out the video card on my older Mac desktop, so they gave me a new "Quicksilver" model. Woo...damn sexy beast of a machine. I love it! I might seriously consider getting a Mac for my next home computer. Who knows, maybe you'll see me on a "Switch" commercial.
My thoughts have been on home more than usual lately. Home being Arizona of course. I may have lived out here in Virginia for almost 4 years now, but AZ will always be my home. After this summer, I would gladly go back to 110 degree heat, as long as it meant not having to deal with 80% humidity on top of it. It's one thing to be 100 degrees. It's another to be 100 degrees with 95% humidity. I don't know how people stand it. Aside from a few short days last week, it's been like that all summer. Ugh. So yeah, give me the dry heat of the desert, or better yet, the cool air of the mountains. Man, I miss home.
I refuse to let July slip by with only one entry, such as June did. Makes it seem pointless to have a journal with only one entry a month. On the other hand, it seems pointless to have a journal whose entries lately consist of "I've been working", "I've been busy at work", and "Geez, it's been reallllly busy at work!"
So hopefully the rest of this journal entry will be everything BUT work.
How pathetic. I sat here for at least half an hour trying to think of something to write about other than work. I can write about kids, they're doing fine. Cody's physical therapy is coming along well. Gail's been teaching Sarah how to swim, and apparently she can swim underwater very well. Now we just have to get her to swim on top of the water.
But other than the occasional game of Starcraft or a new one, Stronghold, over at Jeff's, it's been nothing but work mostly. We did finally manage to get the dark blue wallpaper out of the master bath, so it's much brighter in there. Now, we need to get new sinks, cabinets, and light fixture. Oh, and new shower doors. I found some at Home Depot that I really like.
I also think I might like to add some more color to this site when things cool off at work. Then again, perhaps not. I kind of like the simplicity of it. Thoughts?
Our 4th of July weekend was a blast. Gail's parents came out from Tucson, and we took them out to Ida Lee park in Leesburg, where we've gone every time since we came out to the East Coast. We keep meaning to get into D.C. to see the National fireworks, but something always precludes us from going. Aside from the extra tight security and terrorist threats, there was the heat to contend with. And truthfully, I think I was more concerned with the heat than the other stuff. Besides, Ida Lee usually puts on a fantastic show. They had several moon-bounce things for the kids, vendors selling your typical carnival food, and a live band, The Fabulous Hubcaps. We had a great time, and the fireworks were probably some of the best I've seen.
Other than that, it's just been work. Work, work, and more work. We have a huge project, and the launch date was moved up by almost a whole month, so everyone is scrambling like mad. Truthfully, I shouldn't even be writing this. I should be trying to figure out why my stuff doesn't work like it should. But I've been working 70 and 80 hour weeks, so I thought I'd take 15 minutes to update my journal. Poor thing probably feels neglected. :)
At work, we are currently working on getting the client for China working. For the longest time, my main job didn't have anything to do with the client itself. Instead, I worked on getting our Internet Appliances out the door to different people around the company. Not a real demanding job, rather a boring, and degrading one to some extent.
Well, last week, my boss called me into his office and said that he wanted me to handle the address book for the China client. This is a HUGE task, and I get to do it. gulp While it's cool that he trusts me with this, I haven't done any of the sort of coding required for this for almost 3 years. And what I did before hand was piddly stuff. This is huge, major, push it out the door code...eeeep
So anyway, I'm in major panic mode. Guess we'll see what comes of it.