My Life

Been a while

2006-08-16T08:23:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the big delay between posts, but I've been busy busy busy. The house is finally done! We're somewhat moved in, enough that we are living there now! We're moving the rest of our stuff during the evenings and Deanna is doing some during the day. We're so happy that it's finally done! The house is wonderful, though there are a couple of minor things that need finishing, the power company cut down some trees that are still laying around, I&J is going to chip them in a couple of weeks, and they also need to fix the grade by the basement door to outside. The dishwasher leaks a little, but it is usable until Sears can come fix it. We're supposed to be getting our washers and dryers, the satellite TV hookup, and the landline phone installed today. I'm going to be getting Verizon wireless broadband instead of satellite modem, less equipment, and hopefully EVDO will be out where we are before long. Even still, the 1X-RTT isn't bad, about 2x a 56k modem, and I don't download big stuff that often. I need to get a LP tank installed for the fireplace and the generator that my father-in-law is getting for us.

Meagan, Brenna, Sarah and I are all still doing Karate, though Sarah is going to be taking a break to play soccer this fall. Riley and Eryn are also going to be playing, and I am going to be coaching. Should make for a busy couple of months, with us still moving in and all. School has already started for the older 3 girls, and Riley and Eryn will be starting pre-school on the 30th. Deanna's going to be lonely during the day while they are gone, but she will still have Lissa for a couple more years.

That's all for now, as you can see, I've been quite busy. Hopefully I'll be able to post a bit more regularly now that the house is finished.

Wedding

2006-06-06T21:29:00.000-05:00

Chuck and Claire's wedding was on Saturday (6/3), it was nice, but
long. I was one of the groomsmen. Meagan and Brenna were junior
bridesmaids, and Sarah was a flower girl. I forgot to drop off the kids
shoes the night before like we were supposed to do, but it worked out
OK, they just took pictures barefoot. Debra had to bring the twins down
about an half hour before the wedding anyway, so they had their shoes
for that. The Men's Warehouse gave one of the groomsmen a red tux
instead of a blue one, and didn't have any more of the blues left. They
ended up bringing a charcoal gray one, and Chuck wore that so the
groomsmen would be the same color. Turned out OK in the end.

Kids and I have tests for our next belt levels coming up on Thursday.
Mr. Craddock says the kids are all ready, I know I am. I could almost
test for Orange instead of Yellow, but I'm missing one kata, and I don't
think I've done some of the others long enough to be at orange level
with them.

House

2006-05-25T05:58:00.000-05:00

The house is coming along nicely. They have most of the interior done, Frank is working on the HVAC now. They need to get an electrician in to put in our second panel for the generator, and the plumber needs to finish up and hook up our water heater. Deanna is going to paint the girls rooms this weekend so she can have that done before they get the carpet in. The porch looks really nice, the side one should have a nice view of the creek once they finish clearing. I'm really looking forward to getting moved in.

House

2006-05-03T22:05:00.000-05:00

Woo Hoo!! The house got delivered today! Three of the four pieces were waiting in the road across the street from my driveway when I drove home. The 4th arrived a couple of hours later, and the truck pulling it broke down upon arrival. Unfortunately that was one of the bottom pieces, so they didn't actually get the house set on the foundation today, but they did manage to get all the trucks on the property (I didn't see this, Deanna did. I'd like to know how they got them all in there, going to have to look in the morning). The crane they were going to use unfortunately has a job with VDOT tomorrow, so they may not get it put on the foundation until Friday. Hopefully things will progress quickly from there. I've talked to one of the plumbing guys about getting the tankless water heaters, and he is going to be getting me prices. I'm also talking to ANOTHER plumber (why we have 2 I don't know) about placement of the rough-in plumbing for the bathroom in the basement. Unfortunately the septic tank doesn't sit low enough to have the bathroom in the corner we wanted it (the one under the master bath), so it looks like they're going to be running pipes through the basement ceiling to the other side of the basement. Ah well. We're all very excited that it is finally here!!

House

2006-04-25T22:30:00.000-05:00

Been meaning to write about this, just haven't had time to get to it until now. We're finally seeing some progress on the house, the basement walls are up, and hopefully the plumbing will be in soon. Still haven't seen any additional clearing. I'm going to call Ian tomorrow and find out what's going on with that. I'm hoping everything is done by June, but we'll see. The kids are writing down what they want for a playground, I'm going to make them something nice.

Karate

2006-03-24T16:53:00.000-05:00

The white belts in the adult class got their green stripe on Tuesday. On Thursday we got to spar for the first time since I joined the class. It was fun, but I was against a yellow belt that was about 14, so not much challenge. Next time I'm going to try to go against one of the adult yellow belts, or maybe one of the higher up students, or the teachers. I really want to get some good sparring time in, I like doing it.

House

2006-03-18T09:57:00.000-05:00

Still waiting...

Karate going ok, one of the yellow belts annoys me, I will treat it as a learning experience. I have learned Kihon 1 (though I'd like to know what it's actual name is instead of it's number. My previous training in Tae Kwan Do interferes sometimes, as I tend to take too wide a stance, and twist my torso.

Kids are doing well, Meagan is having some trouble with the front leg muate, but doing well overall. She has a tendancy to interrupt the instructor though, going to get her in trouble at some point, but I think he's making allowance for them at the moment.

I don't think Sarah likes it quite as much as she did when Brenna and Meagan were in her class, but she still seems to be having fun with it.

Karate

2006-03-07T22:54:00.000-05:00

Meagan and Brenna moved up to the adult class tonight, and I started my first class. The 3 of us went off separately with a green belt to go over the basic blocks and stances. I think Meagan will enjoy being in the older class, I'm not sure about Brenna though. She says she likes it, but I think she would have more fun in the kids class. She is Meagan's size, but still only 9, that 18 months makes a good bit of difference in maturity between the two of them. Sarah is still in the kids class, and she still enjoys going. While we are practicing she watches stuff on our portable DVD player, the other two do while she is practicing. I'm just glad they are all having a good time. I'm going to see if I can get them to practice with me in the evenings some now, they haven't really been doing that on their own.

House again

2006-03-06T08:11:00.000-05:00

When my parents came by to drop off the kids today, I took them down to have a look at what had been done so far. As we were walking back, I happened to look down the property line, and noticed that a great deal of the driveway was on the wrong side of the property line, so I'm going to have to get the construction people to move the driveway yet again. I already had to have them move the entrance because they had that too far into my neighbors property according to the easement we have from them. This is on top of them not knowing that they were supposed to have cleared 2 acres of land around the house which they are going to have to come back and do. Hopefully they can get it all done at one time.

House

2006-03-01T17:34:00.000-05:00

Well, the house is getting closer and closer. The closing went though just fine, and they have the hole dug for the basement. Unfortunately they couldn't put it exactly where we wanted it, as we have lots of shale clay in the area. They had to move it a bit closer to our property line (thankfully the one we share with my sister-in-law), and twist the house a bit, which has become a bit more problematic than the moving of the site. The door out of the basement now has to be on the right hand wall, as the property slopes from left to right, so if it was put on the back wall there would have to be retaining walls. We were planning on having the electrical and HVAC stuff in the back right corner, but now the door is going in that area, so I want the interior HVAC in the back left corner. The master bedroom is on the left hand side of the house, so having the outside unit over there may not be a good idea, although it would be near master bathroom, as that is what is against the back wall. The house is supposed to be on site sometime this month! Yay!

I'm going to be putting in 2 on-demand water heaters, one near the master bedroom, and one near the upstairs bathroom. I'm looking at a 2 model 180's, I think they should do quite well.

Skiing

2006-02-19T07:27:00.000-05:00

Meagan, Brenna, Sarah, my parents, and me went skiing to Wintergreen yesterday. Once they had their lesson and went down the hill once after that they all had a good time. It was a pretty good day for it, just a little windy. Temperature was just a bit below freezing, cold enough for them to make snow. Meagan had the hang of turning for the most part by the time we left, and was doing pretty well. Brenna and Sarah we're still falling most of the time when they turned, but had improved a good bit during the day. On our last run right after lunch they were all tired, Brenna and Sarah not doing as well. They all said they wanted to go again, don't know if we'll get a chance this season or not. I think I will try snowboarding next time we go.

House

2006-02-09T16:50:00.000-05:00

Well, got a new set of documents to the loan officer today, as they needed more recent copies of everything I had given them before because it has taken so long to get the release approved. Thankfully it was all easy to get my hands on. I love doing everything online. Now if ING would just do checking accounts.
I've been doing some Tai Chi lately, and I need to get back into doing yoga, my back has started bothering me again, due to me sitting almost all day long no doubt. The 90 minute round trip drive doesn't help, but at least I don't have to deal with much traffic, that would put me over the edge. I'm going to ask Wachovia again about getting remote access to their network so I can work from home sometimes. Would be nice to be able to work from home once or twice a week again.

Karate

2006-02-08T17:54:00.000-05:00

The kids are doing well in Karate. Meagan and Brenna are making good progress. Sarah is doing well also, but I think she is tired by the time we get there, so is somewhat distracted, jumping around and playing games. Hopefully Meagan and Brenna will be ready to get into the 11+ program soon so I can start taking it with them.

Good news on the house today, Debra and Joe's bank approved the partial release and the documents should be at the title agency tomorrow to be signed and filed with the county. We are supposed to close on the house next Thursday, and hopefully building will proceed quickly from there! I am very excited and definitely ready to get into my own house again.

Karate

2006-01-22T20:49:00.000-05:00

I got the kids signed up for Shinki-Ryu Karate, with a 9th level black belt as the soke. He teaches class at the school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I like his philosophy, he doesn't just give out belts for learning how to punch and kick, the students have to follow many of the Japanese traditions in order to progress. They have to actually keep track of altruistic behaviour to people outside the family, things they do to help their family, and a number of other things that aren't done at most Karate schools. He also teaches them respect and responsibilty, which is lacking in a lot of teaching. I will start taking the class as well when Meagan and Brenna are ready to move up to the advanced class, which is currently taught right after the younger students class.

Soccer and Junior Bridesmaids

2005-11-20T15:16:00.000-05:00

Well, the last games of the season were yesterday. Brenna's team won, 4-0, Sarah's team lost 9-7 (a good game, high scoring, but we lost focus at the end), and Meagan's lost 2-0. Unfortunately Meagan's team didn't win a game all season. Brenna and Sarah's teams got there trophies for the year yesterday, but Meagan's coach was at a tournament, so they will be getting theirs Monday night at Roma's.

Meagan and Brenna had to go get fitted for their Junior Bridesmaids dresses for Chuck and Claire's wedding. They're getting married June 3 2006. Niki has set the date for her wedding, the weekend before Labor day 2006, can't remember if it's Saturday or Sunday. This is the house that they're renting for the relatives to stay in for the week. They're doing a beach wedding, should be neat.
Joe's father passed away on Thursday, he and Debra and Lissa left today to go up to MA. They were going up on Tuesday, so Joe is upset that he didn't get to see him again. Deanna says it's going to be strange without Debra and Lissa around.
Riley is doing really well with potty training, she has been sleeping in "big girl" panties for a while, and has only had a couple of accidents. We're still trying to deal with Eryn's pooping problem, we're giving her 2 doses a day of senokot to soften things up so she can get some control over things. She will pee if you prompt her, but she's been in pull-ups for a while so doesn't worry about it if you don't ask her. Hopefully things will get resolved in the next 2 months.

Soccer Saturday

2005-11-12T16:03:00.000-05:00

Both Brenna and Sarah's teams won today. Sarah did a pretty good job, she still has some issues with following the person with the ball instead of kicking it away from them, but she did pretty well anyway. Brenna looked like she was playing some offense today, as was Meagan. Meagan's team was playing one that was undefeated, so the 4-0 loss wasn't too bad for them.
Brenna's coach had a pizza lunch for them, we were late because Brenna changed her mind on whether she wanted to go or not 3 times. I went with the kids and my parents, Deanna and Debra went to Potomic Mills with Lissa to get some Christmas shopping done. We had a good lunch, kids behaved well. Next week is the last soccer game of the season, so I hope Meagan's team wins so they can at least get one win.

Weekend

2005-11-08T14:12:00.000-05:00

We had a busy weekend, soccer on saturday, camping in the yard saturday night, and Kings Dominion on sunday.

Breanna's team won, Meagan's and Sarah's both lost, Meagan was 3-1 I think, and Sarah's was 3-2. I saw some of the game before Sarah's, in the same league, the two best teams were playing, it was quite something to watch. They were really good for their age range. Meagan's team didn't play as well as they did last week, but they did ok. I didn't get to watch much of Brenna's game, it started in the middle of Meagan's, and Sarah's started right after it ended, so I had to go help them get ready. Games were late last week, 10:00, 10:30 and 11:30.

Because of the late games, I decided not to try camping at another location, as it was dark before Deanna got back from doing the grocery shopping this was a good plan. We had hamburgers and smores, the kids put the tent up pretty much by themselves, but the air pump broke right before they were done inflating the last air mattress. This was the one Sarah and I were sleeping on. I tried blowing it up, and got it inflated, but they have both a screw-on top and a valve for something, and I think I forgot to plug the valve, either that or it has a hole in it, and it deflated. I don't do well sleeping on the ground, I was waking up every hour or so.

Sunday we went to Kings Dominion, it was the last day of the season, and season passholders only. It was quite a bit less crowded than normal. The twins and lissa got to ride 3 or 4 rides, then we got lunch. After lunch Meagan, Debra, David and I rode the Volcano, then Deanna rode the scrambler with Brenna and Sarah. Meagan and David then went to ride the Rebel Yell and Hypersonic, Deanna and Sarah rode the Triple Spin, and the rest of us rode on the Carosel. The last thing we did was see the Spongebob 3D movie and get ice cream and funnel cake. Everyone had a good time, we had a pretty good weekend.

My mom was finishing up her certifications so she could teach water aerobics, that's why the kids were home, and she finished successfully. Congratulations Mom!

I got a call from my cousin Niki yesterday, she got engaged (I presume over the weekend), and is going to be getting married this summer. I jokingly asked her when the kids were coming (joking since she's always said she's not having any), and she said the were going to probably start trying next winter! Cool! I know Kenny is happy, as his son is also getting married this summer, both kids getting married in the same year. Congratulations Niki!

Happy Birthday Dad!

2005-11-01T16:12:00.000-05:00

My Dad had his 58th birthday yesterday on Samhain, happy birthday dad!

Sarah's team played the only undefeated team in her league, they did pretty well considering. They have improved a lot since they started. Sarah has a lot of fun with it, she just needs to work on kicking the ball instead of chasing it. Unfortunately, they won't be having any more practices, as it will be getting dark about the time practice is supposed to start. Brenna's team won 4-3, and she got to play a lot during the game. She still needs work on going after the ball, and on running. Meagan's team played the Stars yet again, I think they have played them 3 out of the last 4 games we've been to. They lost again, but Meagan is continuing to improve every game. She was playing offense this week, and did pretty well, but didn't score. I think Meagan and Brenna would both benefit from running track, maybe Meagan will be able to do that for the middle school next year.

Well, everything is done for the mortgage except for the actual closing itself, for which I need to pick a title agency and give their name to the bank. Once that is done the building will get rolling. I'm about to make the call for that now.

Flock

2005-10-26T13:51:00.000-05:00

I just downloaded the Flock browser, based on the source for mozilla firefox. It has blogging built in, and rss aggregator, integration with del.icio.us, and a couple other cool features, but it is currently pre-beta. It seems pretty fast loading web pages, so we'll see how it goes.

Technorati Tags: browser, flock, beta

2005-10-25T16:15:00.000-05:00

Eryn and Riley on the beach.

Vacation photos

2005-10-25T16:12:00.000-05:00

Meagan, Brenna, and Sarah on the beach

Vacation

2005-10-24T18:32:00.000-05:00

We got back from vacation last night. We all had a great time, although
the first couple of days weren't too fun for me. The first day I got a
migraine, the second morning around 5am I got a kidney stone. The
doctor there said it is described as "incapacitating" pain, I'd have to
agree with that. The doc is also a pilot, and he said they ground you
for about 6 months if you get them, because you'd be in trouble if you
had a recurrence in the air. Other than that we had a great time. The
water was cool, but not too cold to swim in, so we had a good time body
surfing the waves. We went to Jockey's Ridge, I got some pretty good
pictures there that I'll post later. We played a round of putt-putt,
and went to the pool at the rec center almost every night. The three
oldest girls got to go shopping with Deanna and Debra an afternoon each,
they all enjoyed that. All in all a good vacation, I'll post pictures
in the next couple of days.

Soccer Saturday

2005-10-15T17:23:00.000-05:00

Meagan did much, much better playing soccer today. She kept after the
ball, and was paying attention to the game the whole time she was in.
Unfortunately they were playing a team that had them by a good bit in
average age, so they lost despite playing a good game. Meagan took it
better this time, and enjoyed playing, so I think that's good progress
also. Brenna's team tied, but Brenna didn't get to play much, she's not
very fast and doesn't go after the ball. Sarah's team was playing the
second best team in their league, AND evidently completely forgot how to
play between our early practice on Monday and the game. They were
running around the ball instead of kicking it. Ah well, they did have
fun, that's what counts.

After the game we took Riley and Eryn to get their hair cut. The cut
off about 10 inches from each of them, it's around the bottom of their
ears now. It looks really cute on them, I'll post pictures after we get
back from vacation.

Vacation

2005-10-14T20:47:00.000-05:00

Well, its off on vacation I go. Should be having 3 soccer games tomorrow, hopefully Meagan's team will win this one. After that the 3 older kids are going with my parents for the night, and the rest of us are going to finish getting ready and pack things up to leave in the morning. I am hoping to get in a night or two of camping while we are down there, as it's supposed to be sunny until next weekend.

Robotic Car

2005-10-11T17:46:00.000-05:00

http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/000478.html
Wouldn't we all like one of these? I think we are a number of steps closer due to the DARPA Grand Challenge. I've been following the Virgina Tech Smart Highway project since it got started, it being my alma mater, and me hating driving AND having to drive about 90 minutes a day. Hopefully that will soon be a thing of the past. I'd love to be able to get in my car and tell it where to go too, I can think of a lot of things I could get done with an extra 90 minutes a day. I could probably even get part of my work done, what with wi-fi being offered everywhere.

More Rain

2005-10-11T16:36:00.000-05:00

Meagan and Brenna's soccer practice got canceled for the night. Sarah's coach moved her practice to last night, so she at least got hers in. It's looking like rain here for the rest of the week, but Saturday looks like it's going to be sunny, so they will get their games in before we go on vacation. Sarah's team is starting to really understand the game, we've been working on getting them to pass the ball, not get in each others way, and to play defense.
We're going to Corolla on vacation starting Sunday. I need to get our tent dried out so we can get some camping in during the week. We have a house directly across the street from one of the recreational centers they have in the communities. The weather is looking good for the week down there, sunny through next Thursday.
Work is going pretty well. I'm doing some that is at least more interesting than converting procedures from MSSQL to Oracle. I am working on converting an application from VB6 to .Net that talks to a DTC (Depository Trust Company) mainframe. We have two options to talk to it now, using files (basically EDI), or message queuing. I am, of course, hoping for the latter option, but the odds are currently very much against it, as their data team does mostly file moves, and doesn't know much about message queuing. You'd think a large company like Wachovia would have people that know about pretty much everything, but I guess not. I'm trying to read up on security some more in my spare time, I'd really like to get a job in that area until I can move into the bioinformatics or biotechnology fields.

Rain

2005-10-10T13:42:00.000-05:00

Well, soccer got rained out on Saturday. On the good side we got to finalize the plans for the house, and it looks like we signed our contract at just the right time, as we avoided being screwed by the cost of materials increases due to everything going to Louisana. I also heard that FEMA has bought up all the used recreational vehicles. Don't even get me started on that. My parents were planning on doing a cross country tour next summer in a used RV, so I don't know if they're going to be able to go that way with it.
I saw a summary of the Kaine vs. Kilgore debate that was on TV, which finally allowed me to make up my mind who I'm voting for. After looking at their web sites and what they have done, it was very difficult to tell a difference between them, fortunately something came out in the debate, Kaine and Warner raised taxes in order to balance the budget, so I'm voting for Kilgore. I'm all for a balanced budget, but I don't think we need to be raising taxes to do it, there are plenty of programs and wasteful spending that can meet with the axe instead of raising taxes.

Parents back from vacation

2005-10-06T13:38:00.000-05:00

My parents and one of my cousins got back from vacation last Sunday night. They spent a week with my great-aunt in Michigan, in the "north woods." My great-aunt has a cabin on a lake, where they spent the week. There is no electricty and no phones, they cook with gas or on a grill. They had a good time, and really like the area. They went to Mackinaw island and a bunch of small towns in the area, got some really nice pictures. We are going to go visit them next summer, and maybe stay in the cabin in the woods as well.

2005-10-02T08:17:00.000-05:00

Front picture, from the left, Meagan, Brenna, and Sarah.

2005-10-02T08:16:00.000-05:00

Picutres of the girls soccer uniforms, Meagan's team is the Sharks, Brenna's is the Soccers, and Sarah's team is Spike.

Soccer Saturday

2005-10-01T13:51:00.000-05:00

Kids and I went camping in the back yard last night. This was the second time, and I think we're ready to go to a campground next time. We got new sleeping bags for the kids, as they youth ones they had are only good down to 50. The tent was a bit smaller than I thought, and only 3 of the 4 air mattresses fit in the tent, but we did OK on just the 3. I cooked hot dogs and hamburgers on a little propane grill while the girls set up the tent. They did pretty good with it, only couldn't figure out how to get the pieces to hold the front and back flaps up, which even took me a few minutes to figure out how to do.

We had soccer games today, 2 at 9 and 1 at 11:30. Sarah's team won, but we only had 3 players, and the other coach was a really good sport and gave us 2 of his (he had 7) so we played 5 on 5. I think one of his players scored as much as the rest of ours, but half of them were for the wrong team. He would just kick it into any goal whenever the ball got close to one. It was a really fun game, all the kids had a good time, I don't think they cared if they won or lost, I don't even know if they knew when the game was over, which is how it should be at that age. Meagan's team is getting better, but they couldn't get the ball into they goal, they lost 2-0, but kept the ball on the other teams side of the field most of the game. I didn't catch most of the game, I help coach Sarah's team, so I only got the last 15 minutes of Meagan's. Deanna watched some though, and what I saw was the same, she is still not going after the ball, just walking around most of the time. Brenna's team played at 11:30, and they were up 2-0 after the first half, but ended up losing 3-2. Brenna is doing a better job keeping her mind on the game, but she still needs some work on running, that or working on where she needs to be, as I don't think she's ever going to be the fastest player. She does pretty well on defense, keeping between the ball and the goal most of the time, but once someone gets behind here, she can't catch them. The coach put her on offense, and she doesn't do so well with that, she's a bit timid when she's playing the game, but not when we practice at home, hopefully that will go away with experience. They all said they had fun, that's the most important thing, but I do hope Meagan's team wins one soon.

RateMyProfessors

2005-09-29T08:20:00.000-05:00

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,68941,00.html

I love this idea, maybe this will get some of the profs that are just there to do research out of the classrooms, where they stink. If you're just there to do research, go find a job in industry, academies are for students to learn, not sports, not professors pet projects, not clubs, and not social groups.

Robie believes universities would be better off collecting formal faculty ratings and disclosing them only to students.

Swapceinski, who got the idea to start RateMyProfessors following a bad experience with a professor at San Jose State, doesn't think that's a bad idea. However, he fears students would withhold negative opinions if the university is the one collecting evaluations.

But Robie insists there's a better solution than putting evaluations online for the world to see.

"What other job are your performance records up to public scrutiny?" he asked. "Just because many professors are being paid by taxpayers, does that mean they give up all rights to privacy?"

Absolutely, everyone in private industry has performance reviews where their employer reviews how they are doing, why should that be different if you are employed by taxpayers? That means that the taxpayers should be able to see how you are doing in your job. If you are going to take a position serving the public, the public should be able to find out how you are performing in that position.

Space Elevator

2005-09-27T11:16:00.000-05:00

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/050923_spaceelevator_test.html

This looks pretty awesome, once someone actually completes building one, it will dramatically reduce the costs and dangers of getting people and materials into orbit, and once in orbit, you are "Halfway to Anywhere in the Solar System". I hope to go up one day, and maybe even to mars if the price is right, can't afford that yet though.

Test picture blog

2005-09-26T19:59:00.000-05:00

Ok, here is my first picture blog. This should be of an osprey nest I took over the summer while we were at Naylors beach off the Rappahanock river. If this comes out ok I'll be posting more.

Weekend

2005-09-25T20:25:00.000-05:00

Had a busy weekend, soccer Saturday, Sarah's birthday on Saturday, and
we went to the state fair today. The kids did well in soccer, Sarah's
team won 6-3, Brenna's team won 8-0, and Meagan's team lost 5-1. Meagan
got hurt twice, she caught one on her fingers, hyper extending her
wrist. Then she got hit in the eye, and then hit in the head while on
the sidelines. Not her day. Her wrist swelled some, but went down with
some ice. It was still sensitive to move this morning, but I don't
think she needs to go to the doctor. Deanna seems to think otherwise,
but we'll see how she does tomorrow.

The kids had a good time at the fair. We took the twins on the kiddie
rides first, then had some lunch, and then I took Meagan and Sarah to
ride on some big rides, Brenna didn't want to go, she's not big on the
roller-coaster rides. We got in 3 rides, then went back to meet up with
the rest of the group, and then everyone got to pick 1 more ride before
we went home.

My parents left for Michigan right after Sarah's party, they'll be gone
for a week up to the north woods.

I'm signing up for Picasa and Hello, so hopefully I'll be able to get
some pictures up on the blog before long.

Rick's 40th

2005-09-20T06:41:00.000-05:00

Just got an evite to Rick's 40th birthday, should be fun! He's one of my friends from the old Whitlock group, one of the quake gang. He was the only one that consistantly had a chance to beat me. Ahh, I miss the good old Quake days. I added about 10 people to the list on eVite, hope I didn't over do it, but his wife said the more the merrier.

Soccer

2005-09-18T09:01:00.000-05:00

Kids all had their first Soccer games yesterday, they all played well, but all lost. Meagan got bent out of shape over it for a while. I wouldn't mind if she lost a bunch, she needs to learn how to have fun whether she wins or loses the game. I think she had fun playing, just got mad that they lost. Brenna did ok, but she needs some confidence and to learn to go after the ball. Sarah's team did really well, the other team had a ringer that kept running away with the ball and scoring for them, but we did ok, lost 5-3. Sarah did good, she knows to go to the ball and which way to kick it. The whole team needs to learn defense when the other team starts running away with the ball. They all go running toward the goal, even passing the ball carrier, but don't know to kick it away from them! We all had a good time, but it was a bit hot, got up to 34, and sunny with no shade. I'm going to look for a couple goals to practice with them, one the big girls size and one Sarah's size. I'm going to start leaving at 3:00 again, I was working some overtime to make up for the day I missed, I've made up all but 3 of it, so I can go in 30 mins early for a week and have it done. Should be able to get in some practice then before we have to come in to let Deanna fix dinner.

RMS, etc.

2005-09-14T20:58:00.000-05:00

Well, the RMS portal kinda fell through. I didn't really have the time necessary to get the parts they wanted working 100%, and BigOak didn't get a chance to review it until the week before they wanted to go live. RMS decided to keep the calendar part, and I refunded the rest of the money to them. I'm still going to work on when I have time, but that won't be for a while I think. Getting the house built is going to take quite a bit of time and attention. I need to find time to go to dinner with a guy that contacted me middle of August about doing some freelance work.
We got the location for the house marked, and the loan stuff is going through. The land should be getting percolation tested sometime in the next 2 weeks. I just got in touch with one of the people I used to work with at Albright & Wilson, and one of my friends from Patrick Henry. They guy from A&W is down in Baton Rouge, LA, they came through the hurricane ok, lots of wind and rain, but they aren't below sea level.
I've been keeping in touch with one of the guys from Amentra that I worked with at NTelos, Rich. We like to discuss politics, he sends me the dems viewpoint, I send him the reps. We get into some pretty good discussions. Haven't talked to the others that much, email once in a while.
I'm going to lunch with the old Dynex gang this Friday, haven't seen them in about a year now, will be good to talk with them again. I went to lunch with the Suntrust gang when I first moved over to Wachovia, they're still putting up with the same old stuff. Glad I got out of there, just wish i had done it sooner.
Wachovia is going ok, nothing too exciting at the moment, converting an app from MSSQL to Oracle, and can't use stored procedures, which is somewhat of a headache. Dunno if they are going to keep me on after this project or not, we'll see. One of the PM's there is looking to maybe form a startup after his contract is up, and may be looking for .Net people, not sure if I want to do that or not, but if it takes off there may be some money in it.

RMS Portal

2005-08-29T18:37:00.000-05:00

Well, RMS work not going so hot. They wanted it to be complete by the time school started this year, but that's not going to happen. They're going to buy the calendar piece that is finished, and maybe the messaging piece that is finished as well. I'm going to keep working on it, I still think it can be sold once it's finished, and maybe they'll buy it in pieces if I can get them done fast enough. Don't know if I can do that though, because the house is starting to take off. I've been working on getting everything worked out for getting that going. We sited where we want the house on the land, and now we just have to look over the contract and sign it and they can start working on it

Been a while

2005-08-12T22:01:00.000-05:00

Whew been a while. I've been a little busy since my last blog. I have moved on from nTelos, got the feeling they were jerking me around, were just going to keep me on until the project was done, then let me go. They made an initial offer in May or so, coming in way under what I told them it would take to bring me on permanent before they even brought me on contract. I gave them my counter offer 2 weeks later, after doing some research on what would be fair. I didn't hear anything back. I contacted my contract agency, and they set up a meeting with me and my nTelos supervisor and one of their reps. the supervisor blew off the lunch, thats when I decided not to renew the contract when it was up on June 30th. I didn't tell them until June 29th, since they were so timely in renewing my contract on the day it was up on the prior two times the renewal dates cam e up. Ahh well, bridges burned. I have moved on to a contract at Wachovia for about 20% more than I was getting at nTelos, so I'm not too worried about it.

We've finally made substantial progress on getting the house built. We have the land in our name, we have plans, and once the land is completely marked we can site the house and break ground! One of my cousins works for a construction company and has offered to clear the land for the cost of renting the equipment, so that will save us some initial cost up front. The builder said it should be done in 5-6 months, so hopefully we'll be moving in early next year.

I've signed the three older girls up for fall soccer, I hope they enjoy it. I'm going to try to find a kung-fu school nearby as well.

Moving to OSS

2005-05-28T18:41:00.000-05:00

Well, I've successfully made the move to open source software for my email, web browser (I moved that a while ago), calendar, and RSS Reader. I moved to Mozilla products for everything but the RSS Reader, I'm using Thunderbird for email, Firefox for browser, and Sunbird for calendar and tasks. I was using Thunderbird's built-in news and RSS reader, but on the last side job I've been working on I've been modifiying RSS Bandit, and it has a great many more features than Thunderbird does, so I've just switched over to that. I'm looking into moving to Eclipse for my development environment, but I'm going to need a VB.Net plugin for that, and I haven't seen one out there. There is a C# one, but I do some stuff in VB as well as C#, so I'm going to have to keep VS.Net around for a while longer I think. I already use NAnt to build, NUnit for unit tests, and I'm looking at NCover for unit test coverage. The only thing I really miss is the Journal feature in Outlook, I used to use that as a timer for projects I was working on, but I'll find something for that, tho I wish it was built in to Sunbird. Maybe I'll look into writing a plugin for it. I was starting a calendar app on sourceforge, but I could never get CVS to work to connect to them.

On the home front we had an un-birthday party for the older 3 kids on the 14th. We rented a moon-bounce, cotton candy machine, and sno-cone machine. We had about 20 kids over, they had a great time. This weekend my Great-Aunt Donna came in from Michigan. One of her grandchildren is turning 13 and is having his bar-mitzvah today. We're going to be doing stuff with them tomorrow and Monday. Brenna got accepted to the TAG program for next year at her school.

I've been negotiating with NTelos about my job requirements, I gave them a deadline of June 6th to either have my offer ready, or to provide a 6 month contract extension at $55/hour. One of the supervisors at the contracting company I'm working for them through went there on Friday to talk about the contract. He invited me to go to lunch with them, but I had already planned on taking the day off, so I couldn't go.

Rent A Coder

2005-05-18T14:38:00.000-05:00

Got my first bid from Rent-A-Coder last week! It was pretty easy, setting up an RSS feed for a site that already had their articles being stored in SQL server, so all I had to do is create the query and format the results to XML RSS 2.0. Didn't make much off of that, but the guy that I did the work for is giving me more work. Also gave me a 10 rating on RAC, so that should help toward getting more work off the site. Still have a long way to go in that department though, I think.

Have a deadline for RMS of end of the month, but I am pretty much done with all the back-end work on it. I have all the security and classroom page stuff set up, just need to get some schematics from the guys at BigOak and put that together and it will be done. We did add a couple of minor things for the issue of having students in the database. We're going to allow the parents to add their children to the site if they choose to do so, that way the issue is in their hands on whether or not their kid shows up on the site.

Grrr Blogger

2005-04-28T06:44:00.000-05:00

Stupid mail in blogging is really starting to piss me off. I got back reject messages for every mail I sent in with subject :RMS and Patternfall.com. So I go to my blog site today, and what to I see? The stupid thing had posted once for every time I sent it in. I hope they get the mail thing fixed soon. On the plus side, I got the host for RMS to create an application out of the directory I needed to get the UIP to work properly. Also had to somewhat kludge it though, as I now need the bin folder both in that directory and under the root. No biggie though, doesn’t take up much space, just have to remember now to make sure to update both locations. The one under the root is almost exclusively for the calendar, at some point I will pare down the dll’s in there to only what it needs. Now I need to go in and sync up the tables and stored procs that are supporting all this new functionality. Going to do that tomorrow, my connection from home is just too slow for it.

RMS and Patternfall.com

2005-04-25T13:35:00.000-05:00

Well, I had a relatively productive weekend finishing up the development work on Classroom pages. I now have all functionality completed for them, only piece left is to integrate it with the security model. All was going well until I deployed it up to the production web server. For some reason, the UIP doesn’t appear to like the application running out of the root of the web site. I would get screwy results where it would either send me to http://<path to the view>, or if I put the entire path to the view in the config file, I would get stuck in an endless redirect loop. Talked to one of the guys at Amentra today, said that it had something to do with the UIP doing a string compare to “/”. Going to have to go dig through the UIP source to see WTF is up with that. Hopefully I’ll be able to get it fixed tonight.

On a plus note, Patternfall.com domain FINALLY came open to purchase, after it had been expired for about 90 days. I bought it, then had trouble with DYNDNS already having it in their database under someone else’s account, but they took care of that pretty quickly. I pointed my MX records over to brinkster (where the website and mail is actually hosted), but am getting an error that it doesn’t relay for that address. The live-support guy told me to wait a while for servers to update. I personally don’t think that’s the issue, but we’ll see tomorrow morning.

Whitlock Reunion

2005-04-22T09:48:00.000-05:00

I went to a reunion last night of a bunch of people that formerly worked at Whitlock EBS. It was pretty cool seeing the group again, but a number of people that I wanted to see there didn’t show up. No great loss for me, cuz I see them semi-regularly anyway. I may have made a couple of business contacts, so might get a little more side work shortly, don’t know how that will turn out.

RMS site is coming along, a little more behind than I’d like, but it’s getting there. I have the GUI for everything that needs to be done on the classroom pages, now I just need to finish the back end of it, saving to the database and all, and it will be done! J Yay! Once that is done I will put it up on the site so they can take a look at it. I’m going to need to work on security in that area, as to who is allowed to edit the site, but I don’t think that will be much problem, I think I just need to limit it to who the group “leader” is (in this case the teachers of the class).

FW: Working Out

2005-04-16T08:10:00.000-05:00

I’m trying a different workout this week, based on research that I read saying that spending more time at the gym strength training doesn’t get you additional benefits. I was doing a 3-set circuit of the gym, I am cutting that to 1-set based on the research, we’ll see how it goes. I’m using the time saved to do some Yoga in the morning, mostly stretching hamstring and glutes. Haven’t been following my diet too well this week, did ok Monday and Tuesday, but not so good yesterday. I seem to have the most difficulty when I’m at home all day, and in the evenings. I think I’d do better if the food just wasn’t available, but since it’s there, I eat it. Argh.

Haven’t had much time to spend on RMS this week, hopefully I’ll get it done this weekend, but I’ve a feeling that will depend on whether the weather is nice or not. I don’t think I’ll get a lot done if it is a nice weekend, probably be out with my parents and the kids.

One of my cousins from Michigan is coming down (over?) on May 26^th and staying through the 31^st. She has 3 kids, about the same ages as my oldest 3. We had a good time with them the last time they came down, met them in PA and spent the day there, went to Hershey park, some garden near there, then headed to my parents. They are coming down for one of my other cousins child’s Bar Mitzvah. I didn’t even know they were Jewish, probably because I wasn’t much of a religious person myself, though I am starting to change my mind somewhat in that area, but that could be a book into itself.

Weekend

2005-04-12T07:53:00.000-05:00

Well, had a nice weekend, the weather here was perfect, upper 60’s to lower 70’s all weekend (a bit windy on Saturday though). Went to my parents’ house with the kids Friday night for dinner, then we went to Goochland County Park with them on Saturday and had a picnic lunch. After that we went to the YMCA to swim for a while. We got back home around 5:00. We took a break from outside then and watched Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. We had watched Episodes IV-VI the prior weekend, and they enjoyed it quite a bit. Sunday the kids played outside for a couple hours before lunch, then we had lunch on the back deck, then went downstairs to watch a movie while the twins took a nap. Sarah laid down on the couch next to me and fell asleep for about 2 hours also!

I didn’t get to work on RMS over the weekend as I wanted to, but I did something much more productive and fun. I have about 1/3 of the admin part done for the classroom pages, just need to be able to add new controls and change the ordering of them. Hopefully I’ll have that done by the weekend, and I can upload it to the production server then. Once that’s done I’m going to work on getting some documentation put together for RMS, then I’ll work on any reports that they’d like to have.

House, Yay!

2005-04-07T13:37:00.000-05:00

Finally starting to get somewhere on the house! I spent yesterday morning wandering through Louisa, first talking to a real estate attorney so I had some clue as to what needed to be done for the land transfer. Then I contacted a surveyor to come out and to the survey and make the new plats. That is supposed to take about 4-6 weeks. Once that is done we’ll be able to have them start building, so I’d say we’ll be breaking ground mid May to early June.

Not much else going on at the moment, getting close to completing the next phase of the RMS project, which will include the customizable pages for each classroom. I’m shooting for having it done end of this week.

Getting a little bit of work from Harmony-Web again, QA work. The Lockup has been saying that they are getting email errors. Somebody turned off the error logging feature at some point though, so I had nothing to go on. I turned it back on, and haven’t seen anything going to the log.

Wow, as I said that I checked the log, and lo and behold, there was a sendemail error! W00t, now I have something to work with.

What a weekend

2005-03-21T15:16:00.000-05:00

Ugh, last weekend has to be up for one of our worst. Meagan had stomach flu or something on Thursday, lasted about a day for her, and she felt better on Friday and went to school. Deanna gets a call about 10:30 from the school that Sarah has thrown up, so goes to get her. Then another call at 2:30 that Brenna has thrown up, so she picks her and Meagan up, since school is over at that point anyway. Then Riley and Eryn start with it. Then Deanna gets it Friday evening. What a lovely time I had cleaning up after 5 women with diarrhea and vomiting…

So I get it Saturday afternoon, thankfully it only lasted maybe 4 hours for me, Deanna was feeling somewhat better by that time, so I got to sleep through it. Sunday everyone felt somewhat better. This morning Meagan says she doesn’t feel good again, and then starts vomiting again. Ugh.

So I actually needed to do some work this weekend on RMS, as I have training to do on Wednesday, and I’d like to have at least one of the admin wizards set up and working to show them how it’s going to look. I think I might still make it, not sure though. I’m reading through the UIP application block at the moment to get it to work for me.

More RMS

2005-02-26T11:09:00.000-05:00

I got the solution completely restructured now, and I have all the layers defined, and a couple of functions working in each layer, right now centered on updating/creating new users for the site. Now that the base stuff is complete, adding new functionality to it is easy, and I hope to have all the functionality they initially wanted complete by next weekend. The only issue I can see taking much time is security on the pages, as that isn’t part of the framework that was constructed. I’m going to have to look at incorporating that into the framework at some point, but right now I have another framework that I can use, it just won’t be as easy to use or maintain at the moment. I’d go ahead and incorporate it, but that will take considerably more time than the kluge way, and I want to get the initially functionality out there ASAP. I’ll have time to go back and retrofit it later. Hopefully it won’t be too much data conversion involved, if any at all.

Still really busy at NTelos during the day, their rollout to production is scheduled for 3/31, and there is quite a bit to go before we’re ready for that, especially considering that we have to leave time for the ICMS (an AS/400 program) people to go through and check to make sure the stuff we’re putting into their databases looks correct, and make that billing cycles run.

School was out on Friday due to snow. Once it had stopped, we all went out and played in it, the kids loved it, and the snow was just about perfect, just the right amount of wet to make great snowballs and snowmen, but not too wet to get you soaked and freezing. We stayed out in it for about an hour before they got cold and ready to go in. That was only the 2^nd real snow we’ve had this year, which is a little low for us. Don’t get me started on global warming though, the fact that these morons pushing that the earth is warming up just drives me up the wall! The fact that they have maybe 100 to 150 years worth of data, and the Earth’s climate probably changes in cycles that are at least thousands of years long doesn’t deter them from screaming that people are causing the planet to heat up dramatically. This kind of politicized “science” drives me up the wall. Oh well, I have bigger fish to fry than that for now. Have to choose my battles, or I’ll have no time for any of them.

RMS

2005-02-22T20:48:00.000-05:00

I’ve gotten a lot of work done on the RMS project I’ve been working on since June(?). I have restructured the solution to incorporate all the parts that I purchased/obtained(open source) into something of a whole, still have a little bit of work to do there, but it is coming along quite nicely. I am incorporating a lot of what I have learned from the Amentra team that has been mentoring the NTelos people. The framework they have set up is quite nice to work with, and makes things very easy to maintain, and easily extensible. This should go well with the project, as we are planning on customizing/extending it as necessary for different types of clients we plan on selling it to (schools, churches, sports teams, etc).

My contact at Harmony Web has sent me some info on a .Net project he may be getting, supposed to be hearing back from them soon, which would be nice as opposed to the VB6 work he normally has. The guy from Derivia that I did some report work for sends me this nasty email the other day after I email him 3 different times about the bill that he hasn’t paid that is over 60 days late. Says the quality of the work was poor. I felt like writing back that if he actually gave me some requirements, and definitions to work with, and MAYBE if he actually paid his bills, well, then I may have been more inclined to do the work, but I restrained myself. I just consoled myself by re-depositing the first check he wrote (90 days past due), since it was returned NSF. In his defense he did send a cashier’s check, but my kids managed to get hold of it somehow, so he had to put a stop payment on it. Supposedly his bank waits 90 days before they put the funds back. I waited exactly 90 days from when he said he put the stop payment on it. That was about 5 days ago, bastard better have the money in the account. Ah well.

I found out about another DUG, this one in Charlottesville. The organizer is a professor of technology at UVA, Eric Meier. Mike was going to speak there tonight, but I don’t have time this week. Hopefully I’ll be able to go to some of these meetings soon and make some contacts, I’d like to get some more contract work going.

untitled

2005-02-22T10:58:00.000-05:00

Well, Deanna had a bad day yesterday. She had a migraine pretty much all day. Nothing seems to be working for them anymore. I told her to tell her doctor about it when she goes in for her diabetes test. She is supposed to call today to get in sometime this week for the test, her blood sugar levels spike whenever she eats something with sugar in it, so she may be pre-diabetic. She has been doing the low-carb Atkins diet for a while, so that has probably kept it in check. She also just had her thyroid checked by her gynecologist (although why he would be checking it I don't know), and had blood work done for that, and it checked out normal. She is also doing a store bought test for pre-menopause, but you're supposed to test twice, about 2 weeks apart, she has another week to wait for that one. She's trying to figure out why she has been feeling exhausted all the time. The first test from the pre-menopause kit said she was normal. I hope something is found soon, the constant exhaustion is driving me up the wall, because it makes her moody and bitchy. I'm sure it's not pleasant for her either.

The three older kids all got their report cards recently, they are all doing excellent in school. It's been relatively warm here recently, so I've been taking them outside when I get home in the evening. I need to get a bigger swing-set for them, the one we have only has 3 swings on it, and it is pretty short. I may do something like my dad did, and put a board up between a couple of trees to hang the swings from. I want to get them some of the nice playground equipment that parks have, or some of the tube things that are in the fast-food restaurants. We are planning an un-birthday party for them on May 14^th, we're going to rent an inflatable moon bounce, an snow-cone machine, and a cotton candy machine. Deanna also bought a bunch of prizes to give out to them. We're going to let them invite 5 friends each (not including siblings of friends, who can come as well), and any kids from the family that want to come as well, so there will probably be 25-30 kids there. Hope to get my parents, Kim, and some of the other kids parents to stay and help keep them corralled. They're going to love it, I'm sure.

Aging

2005-02-20T18:26:00.000-05:00

I just joined the Methuselah 300 group. Check out the web site: www.mprize.org. You should also join up, give as much as you can, it's a worthy cause, aging is a disease no one has survived yet. Maybe soon that won't be the case.

I have yet to have my meeting with the person at NTelos who is supposed to be hiring me. My contract is up on the 28th, I hate when people leave something like this until the last minute. I have a feeling that I'm not going to be particularly happy with what they offer me, but thankfully I have 3 other irons in the fire, so I don't have to take it if I don't want to. I hope it works out though, I do like it there. I've been doing a lot of updating of my links this week, I just discovered the virtues RSS news readers, and have been moving a lot of stuff I just had bookmarked into a RSS reader, hopefully that will save me some time reading, as I don't have to visit the sites now to know if there is something new on them.

Just got my corporate taxes paid, wasn't too bad, the dates said that corporate taxes weren't due until March 15, but I haven't been paying estimated taxes, so I don't know if I owe late penalties or not. I'll try to talk to my accountant about it at some point, but I'm not too worried about it, I didn't owe that much anyway.

The house is still moving along at a snails pace. I did find out today that the guy across the street is willing to deed us driveway access through his land to the road, so that will help out. Now I just have to get the in-laws moving on deeding the piece of land we are going to build the house on to us. That seems to be the sticking place at this point.

Busy

2005-01-30T16:52:00.000-05:00

Whew, been a while since my last blog. Been Reeeeeaaallly busy at my day job, with a deadline last Friday. We almost even made it :P. I'm supposed to talk with the boss there start of Feb. about going full-time with them. I've got an interview process going on at company in Charlottesville as a backup in case they try to screw with me. I hope they don't, I like it there, however I am somewhat concerned about the resources they are going to have available. The full-time team on my project is going to be me and 2 other people, and the PM. One of the other people is still learning OOP, so they aren't going to be a whole lot of good for a while. I talked with the PM from Amentra, he says he's been voicing this concern for a while now, but doesn't get much response to it. They say they're planning on slowing development on the project, but the Amentra PM says they've been getting a ton of enhancement requests on the project already, and doesn't think the customers are going to take slowing down.

I also found out that the jerks who own the little piece of land between the one we're going to build on won't sell, and won't allow us driveway access. They were real jackasses about it too. Not sure why they're acting that way, its less than half an acre, and they don't have anything built on it, and you couldn't really build on it anyway.

The family has been doing well, we all got sick with a cold, and 2 of the kids got ear infections from it, but they did pretty well with it. The 3 oldest are still taking skating lessons, and are enjoying them. I'm glad they're doing that, keeps them somewhat active during the winter. I hope to be in our own house this summer. Would be nice to have a fenced yard that they can all go play in.

I finished up my MCSD.Net certification near the end of December, and I bought a Universal Subscription to MSDN. That one hurt the bank account :P Should come in handy though. Hopefully I'll have the RMS project completed soon, going to try to have all the parents put in the database this week, then get the kids in next weekend. Need to create a couple reports for them, but that shouldn't take long. Then I can start on what Big Oak wants to have done in order to sell the thing, and I can start refactoring to make it easier sell it in pieces and customize it. Also need to start working on a project for SunJester Studios. Haven't done much for Harmony Web lately, have to check in with them and see how things are going. I'd like to see something come out of Linked-In, but I don't know that I ever will. I'm going to have to give Rent-A-Coder another try, see if I can get something going there. I'd really like to be able to stay at home and work. My car is starting to give up the ghost, I'm looking to get something like an Altima, and we need to get a new van also, something that will carry 8 or that the passenger airbag can be turned off.

GOVERNMENT SCHOOL IDIOCY

2004-12-08T10:18:00.000-05:00

boortz.com: GOVERNMENT SCHOOL IDIOCY
I just can't stand this kind of idiocy. If this were my child, I'd be suing over something this incredibly stupid. I'm probably going to wind up facing something like this at some point, having 5 kids. I just hope I'll be able to afford the attorneys fee's. Hopefully this zero-tolerance nonsense will go away before I have to deal with it, but I will do my part if I have to. I think a lot of this crap has to do with the tendancies for school administrators to be liberal leaning, hence a push toward communal thinking, so if you don't fit into the commune, you get the boot. This type of thinking is going to end up hurting the truly intelligent kids out there, as they will be taught that thinking "outside the box" is bad, and they will all learn to be good little sheep.

If I didn't live out in the middle of nowhere, I'd be pushing Deanna hard to home school the kids. I want them to have the interaction with other kids tho, and I think that would still be somewhat difficult to do in my area. I have heard about home schooling groups that get together once a week or more to get the kids together and go on field trips and such. I'll have to look into that and see if there are any in my area.

boortz.com: Nealz Nuze Today's Nuze

2004-12-07T11:00:00.000-05:00

boortz.com: THE AARP DECLARES WAR ON YOUNGER AMERICANS:

"The solution? Privatization! If you own your own account it can't be taken from you or your family and given to some stranger living in a retirement community in Palm Desert, California. If you have the misfortune to die before the law allows you to start withdrawing retirement benefits from your account the money goes to your family. Isn't that the way you would want it? Wouldn't you want that money to be spent to make your spouse or children rather than someone you didn't know and who might not have even given you the time of day if you had known them during life?

This is absurd, folks. We're supposed to be living in free country that recognizes property rights. You own you, not the government. You work for you, not for some stranger. In a free country your government should not seize your money by force and put it into a phony 'retirement' fund that earns you a sub-par rate of return and to which you have no legal right beyond what politicians are willing to grant. When you die the money you earned during life shouldn't be seized by government to be transferred to another individual you don't know while your family scrambles about looking for a way to keep their home and pay for your funeral, but that's exactly what the AARP is fighting for."

This boggles the mind. This is basically a form of slavery, where you as the worker are coerced into giving up part of your time to the government to cover social security for people who are retired. As Boortz has said before, if any other company were run the way social security were run, it would be considered an illegal pyramid scheme (which is exactly what it is), but since the government runs it, there is nothing you can do about it, except write to your congressperson. Please, anyone that reads this, write to your congressperson and let them know that you want social security reform to go through, preferably with all of it privatized, but we take what we can get. Also, any retiree with a conscience should tell the AARP that they also want social security privatized, it's just not going to work the way it is.

MCSD
Still slacking on the studying, my goal is to get my final test taken this month, I gotta get on that.

RMS
Got a couple quick things pushed out this morning, administering the important message, and cleaned up the login control.

No child left unmedicated

2004-11-24T09:16:00.000-05:00

No child left unmedicated
I've seen a lot of articles on this piece of legislation, and I can't believe that President Bush, supposedly a man for "less government" is having anything to do with this. I've sent multiple letters to my congressmen urging them not to support this, and I hope you will do the same. This is one of the most disturbing pieces of legislation I have seen in a long time.

RMS

2004-11-23T14:55:00.000-05:00

Finally got the Calender portion of RMS site integrated with Yaf.net's security mechanism. Wasn't too bad once I figured out how the authentication scheme works, and it was definitly knowlegede I'll be using again, esp. seeing how I'm planning on taking the security test for my final MCSD exam. Speaking of which, I've been slacking on my studying for that, but I did do some today. What I learned from the Calendar was in some of the questions on the practice test I bought ($22 well spent), so I definitely feel it was time well spent figuring that stuff out.

Caught up on looking at my Deviant Art watch list, only 250 things I had to go thru...What I get for leaving it for so long. I definitly need to get a new digital camera, and start using it. Or at least start using the old one.

Deanna had to go to WV yesterday to help her dad go thru her grandfather's stuff. Her brothers girlfriend just had to go along and see what she could grab. I was hoping Frank would tell her not to go, but oh well. They brought home a bunch of stuff, some furniture, pictures, china, crystal, etc. I know that must have been hard to do, going through someones things after they die. I'm going to have to go look at some of the stuff my Mom and Kenny saved of grandma's sometime, just to look through it. That will be hard tho, even though it's been over 2 years. I try to do that kind of stuff in small steps, I'm not good at it.

Thanksgiving coming up, that should be good. We're doing lunch at Debra's house at noon, and Kim is doing something at 4pm. My mom said she doesn't know if she's going to that or not, and doesn't want to come to Debra's (I think because of someone's girlfriend, the same one that pushed herself to WV). If she doesn't go to Kim's, we will at least go by there that afternoon to see them. If she goes to Kim's, we'll drop by as well. I'll try to talk with Chuck about his artiste web application he wants to get done.

I went by Chuck's house last Friday to secure his wireless network (was wide open). Played some X-box while I was there, kicked his butt on some fighting game, it was pretty cool. David said he was going to get us one of those for Xmas, as well as the gamecube Debra is getting us for the kids. Should be fun :)

2004-11-20T09:01:00.000-05:00

Well, still haven't been able to talk to the people down the road about buying their little piece of land that is between the property we want and the road. I need to get moving on the house building, we have been here way longer than we thought, and haven't even started yet. I think I will call the builder today and find out what the next step we need to do is, I think we can safely say that we will get the land, but even if we don't, that only affects the driveway, which I'm not worried about all that much.

Work is going ok, nTelos stuff is coming along, but slowly. Takes a while to figure out where (and if) the data I need to send to the mainframe is being kept in the web objects.

Home business is going well also, The Lockup is doing a "soft launch" (not my words) of the site this weekend with part of the functionality we have developed. Supposed to do testing and complete implementation of it next week. Thus I have been spending most of my time doing stuff for Harmony Web, and haven't been able to do much for RMS last week. I may try to get some work done on that today, all I really need to do at this point is get the security for the calendar and yaf integrated, hopefully not too difficult.

Nealz Nuze Today's Nuze - FairTax

2004-11-18T10:37:00.000-05:00

FAIR TAX UPDATE
Boortz is trying to push the FairTax plan with a book, I hope it works. It'd be wonderful to actually keep the money I earn. That, along with being able to control at least part of my social security pyramid scheme would put Bush down as one of the greats in my book.

Business is going ok, Harmony Web is having issues with the service provider that The LockUp is using to provide them with web services. Sombody keeps screwing them up. There was supposed to be a soft launch of the new services at TLU this weekend, hopefully that will still go, but unknown at this point.

I put part of RMS's stuff live for them last Friday, now I have to work on plugging into yaf.net's security system so the calendaring piece will have some, right now anyone that knows the URL can do anything to the calendar, but it's not exposed on the web site anywhere. Dunno about the way YAF is doing security, wish they had used something standard for it, but they are rolling their own. Hopefully I won't have to make changes on that side, hate to do that and then not be able to upgraded in pieces.

Haven't visited DeviantArt in a while, probably have a couple hundred messages to look at. Ugh.

Thanksgiving is looking good. Going to be having lunch at Debra's at 12, then dinner at Kim's at 4, so will get to see both families.

Debra got basically laid off this week, the are making her an as needed employee, I think in some effort to not have to pay unemployment. Whatever, stupid people don't realize she can still collect reduction of hours to 0 benefits. She'll probably look for something part-time locally, maybe the Wal-Mart in C'ville or something like that. She also now has a reason to push on making Kris either buy the house, or get out so she can sell it. Kris has been screwing with them on that for some time.

I gotta get my ass moving on the building process, I looked up a lawyer in Louisa yesterday, hope to call him today and find out what I need to do next. Also need to talk with Dr. Burton about getting my taxes done for my business, and how I should structure that.

MCSD

2004-11-10T08:10:00.000-05:00

Well, I've started studying for the last test I need to take to get my MCSD.Net certification. I've taken everything but an elective, I've deceided to take the 70-330 exam (Security for VB.Net). I've always had a thing for security, so I thought I'd put it to the test. I did a couple of gigs for Whitlock on penetration testing of web sites; not quite the same as developing secure applications, but I think the same pricipals apply.

Business has slowed down, Derivia seems to be doing stuff themselves, which is ok with me for now, I have a lot to do for RMS, and still getting some work from Harmony Web. I really like the guy I've been doing work for from Harmony Web, seems really nice, and very understanding. Just had his second child about 2 months ago. If I ever go out to Chicago (doubtful), I'll have to drop by for a visit. Still haven't taken any time to try and make more contacts through LinkedIn, I will probably do that once I get a good chunk of RMS done, don't want to run out of work.

Kids are doing well, they have started roller-skating lessons, my parents are taking them on Saturday. This is a good thing, they will be getting some needed exercise. They don't get much chance to go outside now, they only have an hour before it gets dark when they get home from school. I'm going to try to get them involved in some sports this spring, depending on how things go with nTelos, and what hours I'm working, etc. Hopefully I'll be working full time for nTelos, and have pretty flexable about when I work, as long as I get at least 40/week in. Sometimes I wish for times like when I was a kid, and we could wander all over the neighborhood without worrying about getting kidnapped or worse. Times sure have changed. I sound like an old man :P

Voting

2004-11-04T08:20:00.000-05:00

Bush won! Yay! I went to vote early in the morning, and noticed that there was really nothing to prevent someone from just walking in and voting. They had the person there checking to see if you were registered, but they didn't give you a ticket to give to the person standing at the polling machine, so all you would have had to do is just get in line. Kinda worrisome.

Almost finished with the calendar and messaging part of RMS web site. I need to look to find a better way of doing role-based security than what I am doing. I am somewhat limited as to what I can do tho, as I am integrating 2 pre-written pieces. Using the roles from YAF message board, and a calendar I got from someone I used to work with. Once I get something out and working for RMS, I'm going to take a look at Microsoft's Authorization and Profile application block to see what I can do with that.

I need to get back on Linked-in and try to get some more customer contacts. I have about 15 people, but none have any work. Not sure how linked-in is going to pan out on stuff like that. I should also pay more attention to the neon guild mailing list to see if there is anything there that might lead to some business.

The nTelos project is going ok, but I have found that we are more behind schedule than I thought we were at the beginning of October. There is a piece at the end of the process that builds a string to send to a middleware product that executes the commands in the string on the mainframe, and I have found that there is a lot that is only stubbed out in the intermediary steps to get to that point. I have learned quite a bit about Microsoft's UIP application block (a MVS implementation), which is good. Seems to be a good framework for anything that needs to follow a series of steps. Will have to look at RMS to see if there will be any part of their site that can use something like that.

Going to be a busy week

2004-10-27T12:00:00.000-05:00

Both my freelance projects have deadlines this week, and RMS is supposed to roll out with at least the Calendar and Messaging pieces. I also have to get an import done to bring in all the people from their old system. I am using an open source project for the messaging, which supports roles and such, so I won't have to create role system from scratch, just have to integrate my stuff into it. This is definitely going to be a 1.0 release. Hopefully once it's out I'll have time to go back and do it correctly (heard that a million times). I'm probably going to have to tho, since we are going to be selling the pieces of the system.

My dad's 57th birthday is on Halloween, said he doesn't want presents "We're too old for presents". I'll probably get him at least something small anyway. Also going to talk to Niki about getting me a deal on a car. The metro doesn't like Afton all that much, esp. only running on 2 out of 3 cylinders. Going to try to get something nice for under 3Gs, then I can work on the metro and see if I can fix it, or really break it.

Tried to call the people down the road that own the strip of land between where we are going to build and the road to talk more about buying it, but whoever answered said I had the wrong number. I think he just didn't understand me, cuz it sounded like the guy I had talked to before. I'll try again tonight. I was going to talk about price initially, but I think now I just want to make sure they're still interested in selling and get the process started on surveying it and having the lawyer draw up papers or whatever. Need to get moving on the house, tired of living in a basement.

Met with the guys from BigOak last night on the RMS stuff, they seemed happy with the direction I was heading. I think Shell was a bit concerned about the calendar, as I hadn't really started on it yet, and he thinks that is one of the pieces they really want. Trying to get in touch with Rick to see if the calender he did for CMax was in .Net, if so I'll see if he'll "donate" it to me.

Back Home

2004-10-25T07:18:00.000-05:00

Ugh, I think that was the worst vacation I can remember. I was sick most of the week, and at least 2 of the kids were sick at any given time. Riley and Eryn were finally getting over the worst of it at the end of the week. I am over it just in time to get back to work, whooopee.

I ended up not getting squat done for the business during the week, but oh well. I have till Nov. 1 to finish up the RMS intranet, I should be able to get it done, there's not that much left. Just have to put an admin front-end on an open soure forum piece that I am using for their messaging system, and finish up the admin for building custom web pages. The hardest part will probably be managing images they want to upload.

My parents kept Savannah for us while we were on vacation, and offered to keep her now until we have our house build. I took them up on it, I hate having to keep her on a chain. They are probably going to spoil her and make her an inside dog, but at least she will be able to run around all she wants.

Email when I got back to work wasn't bad. I think that's because not many people really know me here yet. That should change soon. I am going to be in the on-call rotation I think starting this week. I guess that depends on how much is left before we can actually let people start testing on the system.

Vacation

2004-10-19T09:31:00.000-05:00

We actually left on time Sunday, a first I think for us. Deanna packed a lot less stuff than last year, we didn't pack as many toys and books and stuff for the kids as usual, as they don't end up using them anyway. Sunday went pretty well, Eryn and Riley did very well in the car for 4 hours. We stopped once for lunch at about 1:00, and to let Debra feed the baby. Riley was starting with a cold when we left.

Monday we went to the pool at the rec center, which is right across the street from the house, a nice plus on location there. We stayed about an hour, the little kids pool feels like it's 10 degrees colder than the big pool. Figure that one out. The kids loved it anyway. It took Riley and Eryn a little while to warm up to the pool, but once they did, they didn't want to leave. They ate a good lunch after we bot back, swimming always makes them hungry. After the twins had their nap, we went down to the beach for 45 minutes or so. They played in the sand, collected shells, and chased some seagulls. Eryn went down to the water once, and as I didn't want them getting their clothes wet, I tried to pick her up and almost dropped her back in the surf. I think I scared her a bit doing that, as she didn't go back near the water after that. She'll get over it tho, she loves water. I think the waves put her off a bit too.

The bed is killing my back, and Riley gave me the cold. We gave Riley some cold medicine last night so she could sleep. Deanna ended up getting a migrane during the night, I don't think the bed is agreeing with her either, but she always has trouble sleeping. She took some Maxalt, but that didn't help much. I don't think it turned out to be a migraine, and she took some ibuprofin later and that was helping. Today she is taking Sarah out, along with Debra, Joe, and Elyssa. She is going to take each of the older 3 out by themselves 1 day during the week to shop and spend some time alone with them. I took some cold medicine this morning also, and gave Riley some as well, we were both dragging when we got up. I'm going to try to take the kids to the rec center and let Meagan and Brenna play some arcade games, if Meagan can ever finish her homework. We may go down to walk on the beach after lunch, as I don't expect Deanna back until after that.

I have to get some work done for RMS during the week. The guys at Big Oak are looking to set up a meeting. That will have to be next week, tho I don't know when. I don't get home til 4:30, and it will take me about 30 mins to get over to the Innsbrook area to meet them. I have the messaging part going, and a good part of the classroom web pages set up, just have to finish up the management of them, and the user management. I should be able to get it done before the week is up.

2004-10-15T06:54:00.000-05:00

Well, yesterday didn't go too badly as far as working time goes. I did manage to get 8 hours in for nTelos. Meagan had a good time at Jamestown, they saw all the ususal stuff, glass blowing, the old houses, a Native American village, that kind of stuff. She bought a couple of things, an indian charm, a fan that didn't work when she bought it (I advised her to make sure stuff works in the future before she buys it), and she got a piece of glass from the glass blowing area.

Meagan and Brenna both have Odyssey of the Mind tonight. Deanna is a coach for Brenna's team, so I have to go home early to watch the twins and get Sarah off the bus. Don't know what my Mom has planned for them tonight, probably going to dinner with the rest of the family.

Tomorrow is going to be busy, Deanna is going grocery shopping (as normal), and we have a RN coming over to do physical on both of us for the life insurance we just got through MetLife. We bought a Term policy until we deceide who to buy the Universal one through, though it will probably be MetLife.

Our 11th anniversary is also tomorrow. We're not doing anything tomorrow because we will be getting ready for vacation and such, we'll probably go out to dinner Monday or Tuesday night while we're at the beach.

I'll try to post some from the beach, but I don't know if I will have a dial-up line by then. I think DirecWay provides us with an 800 number, but I have to find out what that is. I probably have to go through Joe, because he's the only one that knows his DirecWay login.

More Scheduling fun

2004-10-14T12:24:00.000-05:00

Turns out my day gets even more fun. Joe's first flight home was late, so he missed his connecting flight, so He won't be there this afternoon. Deanna has to be at school at 4:00 to pick Meagan up from her field trip, so I have to be home at 3:30, which means I have to leave work at 2:30. So I will be missing about 2 hours away from work (I did work from home about 30 minutes this morning, so I will have about 90 minutes to make up tonight). I was hoping to be able to work from home tomorrow, but I think I need to come in and get some stuff done and make sure I have synchronized everything before I leave on vacation. I have to leave early on Fridays anyway because Meagan and Breanna have Odyssey of the Mind after school, and Deanna is one of the coaches for that. nTelos support people still haven't figured out why my VPN connection isn't working, so I don't know how effective any work I do Friday night/Saturday morning would be, since I wouldn't be able to check it in until after vacation. I'm going to try calling the guy who keeps ignoring my emails about it this afternoon when I get home to try and troubleshoot the thing. Also have to get some stuff done for The Lock Up, and Concourse is having issues with one of their servers so I can't get to their reports. Bleck what a day. The intermediary guy for concourse (the one who writes my checks) is having some kind of email problems, his emails to me seem to be falling into a black hole somewhere, so I'm not getting any information from him. He needs to work that out, it is becoming a real issue. I dunno what the problem is, I have 4 different email accounts, and his stuff isn't getting to any of them. Did I mention I'm really looking forward to vacation?

2004-10-14T05:06:00.000-05:00

Well, today will be an interesting day schedule-wise. Debra had to leave at 6 this morning, and my wife has to take my oldest to school early for a field trip. She has to take the Debra's baby with her, because I will have to get the kids ready for school and on the bus. I'll probably be getting to work about 8 this morning, so I will be doing some work from home before and after. Haven't had much time for overtime this week yet, so I am going to try to get a lot of time in today. We'll see what happens, as it's bath night for the kids, and vacation coming up Sunday, blah blah blah. This week hasn't been condusive to getting a lot of work done. I also have to work on Richmond Montessori's intranet, and hopefully my SQL Reporting Server client has provided my with the queries he needs run instead of my trying to guess what they are from data. Also got some new web site work to do for The Lock Up, so it will be a busy end of the week.

Busy Busy Busy

2004-10-13T06:46:00.000-05:00

Well, the next couple of days are going to busy for work. Have deadlines coming up at nTelos while I'm on vacation, so I need to be done with all my stuff before that. I am trying to work at least an hour extra a night from home, I may try to put in 2 the rest of this week. Most of it is done, so I don't think it will be a problem. We are having one of the users take a preliminary look at it today, so I guess it depends on what they think.

Back to work

2004-10-12T11:52:00.000-05:00

My wife got home about 10 last night, had some interesting things to tell me about the people at the wake and funeral. The wife of one of her grandfathers children had the nerve to complain about the fact that the woman who had been taking care of the grandfather for the past several years had his house in her name. This was at the wake! She had taken care of him for several years, he has either been getting alzheimers or dementia, something where he can't remember recent events, but can remember things that happened a while back. He gave the woman power of attorney for him when he first realized he was going downhill, about 4 years ago, and signed his house over to her. After the wake, one of his grandchildren (the child of the woman who wanted the house) wanted to get his mason's ring and some pins. This man had worn said ring for over 50 years and never taken it off. None of his descendants were masons, so they had no use for it, and he was complaining that he wanted the ring to remember him by, when everyone else wanted him buried in it. He proceeded to throw a fit and leave, so they deceided to bury him with the ring. My wife said she was ashamed to be related to them. Some people are just beyond belief.

Sarah has a cold now, the last of the kids to get it. Hopefully no one will pick up anything else before vacation. Joe had to leave for Ohio this week, but he was a big help with the kids while the wife was gone, watching the twins while I was out at the bus stop with the 3 older ones. Really looking forwared to vacation next week, I haven't been anywhere since last year about this time.

Anyway, back to work today after being at home 4 days strait. Deadlines deadlines. I have lots to do before vacation coming up next week, so I'm off to it, just wanted to take a minute to comment on the goings on.

Jobs

2004-10-11T06:39:00.000-05:00

Greetings, I figured I'd start using a real blog instead of where I was posting. I got away from my job at Philip Morris, where I was supposed to be designing a system for them, but ended up doing user requirements gathering and write-ups. Ugh. I am now working at nTelos, with a group of people that know what they are doing! We are writing a sales automation web app, using Microsoft's UIP application block (an implementation of MVC pattern), and several other frameworks. The first place I have worked (and I have a history) to actually reuse code instead of rewriting everything over and over. I am actually enjoying doing the work. I am signed on as 6 month contract to hire, but they may be going through a change of ownership near the end of that, so I may want to extend the contract so I don't end up working tons of overtime for a conversion and not getting paid for it.
I talked with a guy from the Darden graduate school of business at UVa on Friday about doing some part time work for them. I'm not sure I will have the time at this point, as nTelos has deadlines coming up, and I am going on vacation next week. That and they can only pay about half what I charge, but there is the possiblity of getting some good exposure there, so that might make up for the pay. I probably won't be able to work on this project, but the guy said he liked my qualifications, and even if we couldn't work something out on this one, he would definitely like to have me come in on future projects.

I have been slacking on getting the building of my house started. I need to get the ball rolling on purchasing a small piece of land from our neighbors that will sit between our land and the road so we can put our driveway in. Hopefully once that is done we will have the house done in 6 months or so. It will be good to get into our own house again. We have been living with my sister-in-law for the past year so we could save up some money for the house, and while it's not been too bad, I am ready to get back into my own place, and I'm sure the kids are as well (if you don't know, I have 5 girls, age 2-9).

My wife's grandfather passed away this Friday, so she went to WV yesterday and today to go to the funeral. He was 94. I didn't know him all that well, but he was pretty nice from what I did know of him, although he seemed a bit rigid in scheduling of his day (he had to have dinner at 6:00, or he wasn't happy). He was a chemist for someone when he worked, I can't remember who right now. I was also doing a little chemistry work for Albright & Wilson when they were in Ashland before I got my real job :)

Anyway, that's it for now.