Brrr

Wow. what a shocker. I stayed at work today so one of the guys to go to Hitchhickers Guide to the Galaxy. Well, after work, I went outside, and was I surprised. A nice brisk north wind and the temp was much colder than when I went to work.

It is currently, 6:00 PM and it is 48 degrees with a nice north wind. Wind chill is 43 according to Weather Bug.

Star Wars - Revenge of the Sith

Well, it's official, I'm a geek!

I know, this is not a news flash for you.

I am going to be one of the first to see Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. I'm going to see it at midnight. I've seen the re-releases of 4-6 on opening day, and I saw episodes 1 and 2 on opening day, but it was usually later in the day. I've never been one to get up in the middle of the night to go see a movie. But I had the oppritunity, and I just can't pass this one down. We finally see Anakin become Darth Vader!!!

Water fights

I spent some time tonight playing with my boy. Before heading to church, we watered the garden together. That was a lot of fun. He wanted to help, so I gave him the hose, and he started watering. I had to go inside to get some stuff ready for church tonight, so he stayed out and watered. My wife started laughing as she kept watching water go everywhere. When I went back out, just a couple minutes later, he was surprisingly wet. He said the hose kept doing weird stuff.

He gave me the hose, and started playing with me. "Can't get me!" he would scream and then run away. Well, he was close enough first to continue using the sprayer. I tried to get him wet, but bearly. He had a blast. He then ran a bit farther way, and screamed again, "Can't get me!" Well, took a bit more water preasure, but sure enough, I got him. he then runs across the hard yelling that I can't get him, well, time to change the nozzel from spray to squirt! He was very surprised I got him. So he ran behind the tree and screamed it one more time... "Can't get me." So squirt again, but at a good 45 degree angle. And then as the cold water got him, he screamed with joy and ran from behind the tree.

It was great!

Birds!

There is alot of open space where I work. A large fields all around us. A walking trail and creek by us as well. So, needless to say, there are a lot of birds. Currently I see a minumium of 2 geese every day. One of which is more than likely sitting on eggs. I think the other is the male of the pair.

Also, in the courtyard to where we work, there have been some beautiful yellow birds. I'm trying to get a good picture of them, but not sure how they are going to turn out. Anyway, I'm pretty sure they are Goldfinch They are beautiful.

Nice to be surounded by nature before getting locked up in a concrete building. Guess I'm lucky we have windows.

Blood giving

I almost went 2 days in a row without a post. I don't feel very good, but that just wouldn't do.

I left work a bit early today to go give blood. This is only the 3rd time I've done it, but I feel lowsy.

Now, don't get me wrong. Giving blood saves lives, I know that. There is also some research that shows it can be good for you too. However, each of the times I've given blood, I have not done well. I bleed pretty quick, so it doesn't take long, but I feel horrible.

The first time, I wrote it off as that. Since it was my first time, I didn't expect for it to go well.
The second time, I have a busy day at work, and didn't eat hardly anything. Ok, probably my fault since I didn't eat.
But this time, I ate lunch, even had a snack about an hour before I gave blood, and I drank lots of fluids. So no excuse this time.

I had just about decided not to give blood again, but I talked to a friend of mine today who's step father has recently had quadruple bi-pass surgery. After surgy was over, he started losing blood... more than he should. In fact, 4 pints. Now, if memory serves me correctly, a person only has 5 pints. So, someone who has given blood recently helped save his life.

Hopefully, I'll feel better in the morning.

God watches

A bit after my last post, my grandmother called, she wanted to know if I had heard about 8 boys that had had a car wreck. They were friends of a girl that goes to our church, and they were asking for prayer for them. All eight were hurt, and 1 was in ICU.

Shortly after that call, my daughters boyfriend called, seems he and his friends got their car stuck in a ditch and couldn't get ahold of anyone. Well, frustrated, she went to go get him and take him to his house... come to find out, the car was TOTALED in the ditch. All 4 of the boys were hurt. My daughters boyfriend was the least hurt of them all, it is my understanding that his brother will be in ICU tonight. He had a lacerated spleen. One of the boys had brain hemorrage, but they are expecting him to be fine as well.

God really looked after these boys. I'm just glad my daughter stayed at the house today instead of going to her boyfriends house, or she would probably been in that car as well.

Please pray for these boys.

What a day

Well, the day started out ok. I got to sleep a bit late, but my boy was up around 8:00, I wasn't ready to get up yet. Got dishes and laundry done, and get my boy ready for his game.

Not bad so far.

On the way to the game, I pulled the car over to get onto my boy. We get to the game, the kids started warming up and one of the girls fell down. The tears started. Within a few minutes of that happening, I got onto the kids for messing with the goals, my boy started crying. Cried until the game started.

None of the kids would run or go to the ball. They normally play pretty good, but not today. We had 2 boys not there, so everyone had to play 3 quarters. None of them were happy about that.
8 to 1 was the score., and what is worse, the other team scored the one for us. I wouldn't mind so much, but they weren't even trying.

The amusing part though is my boy had his arms out like an airplane and kept flirting with the girls from the other team for most of the game.

For the season we are still pretty good. 2-2-3 We have one more game to play in two weeks.

We'll see how it goes.

Planting done!

Well, I got the last of my garden planted. I now have the following planted...

Lettuce and Spinach - ready to start eating
garlic, jalapenos, onions, cilantro, peas, tomatoes
watermellon, okra, cucumbers

Yummmmmmm

Site Meter

I saw Steven had added a site meter to his site, so I found out how he went about that and added one myself. This is something I was surprised was a default part of the page.

Pretty interesting and easy.
SiteMeter.com

Beam me up Scotty...

Going too far. That is all I can say. In the April 21st post of this article on Space.com, the Sirius Institute is going to beam whale song into space.

Humpback whales.
Makes me think of Star Trek 4: the Voyage home

Some people have too much money, and too much free time on their hands. :)

Raising Seeds

After a very frustrating day at the office I came home in not the best mood. Now don't get me wrong. It was wonderful to come home to my family. My son was excited to see me, and my wife had cooked a great dinner! But I would have perfered to sit and the porch and have a glass a kool-aid and enjoy the wind blowing in my face.

But after eating that delicious dinner, I went outside to expand our garden.

It is amazing how God can work through the smallest things. While I was tilling the ground, my boy, wife and Gizmo (our one eyed boston bull) were playing in the yard. It was very cute.
After I got the ground ready, my boy came out to help plant. First we planted about some watermelon seeds. After that, we planted 6 tomatoe plants. My boy was so excited to get to help daddy.

It was good to be able to raise my boy while we were raising a garden.
We now have Tomatoes, jalapenoes, garlic, lettuce, spinach, peas, cilantro, and watermelon planted. I have okra and cucumbers left to plant. maybe tomorrow.

I worked the ground, my boy planted the seeds, I watered, and God will make them grow.


Planting tomatoes

Spyware, Viruses and XP SP2

Spend the last few hours cleaning spyware and viruses off of a friends machine. Once that was done, I upgraded all her software and installed Windows XP SP2 on her machine.

I am by no means a Microsoft proponent. They are too big for their briches, and that is being nice! They do not take time to test their apps before selling them to the public. If we did that where I work we would be fired!

However, occationally they do something pretty good, and in my opinion Service Pack 2 of Windows XP is it. Even though it is over a 200 MB download. Some of the features it provides are really nice. Now, for me to start thinking highly of Microsoft, it would have taken them to have included these things when they originally released XP, not months after the fact. Heaven forbid they put out good software to begin with.

Other software you may want to consider having on your computer if you use the net much and hate spyware and stuff as much as I do follows
AVG Free anti-virus software
Ad-aware SE Spyware removal tool
Spybot Another Spyware removal tool

I would also suggest running both spybot and Adaware. One seems to get stuff the other does not. These 3 things plus windows XP sp2 if you have XP will do a decent job of keeping your machine in running order.

So long, Shuttle, and thanks for the fish

NASA to Accelerate Plans for Shuttle's Replacement

This interesting story, for me anyway, from Space.com was talking about NASA speeding up the development of the CEV (Crew Exploration Vehicle). It appears that the space shuttle has its death certificate filled out with a planed retirement for 2010. While they are currently working on a new vehicle to replace it (being the CEV) it is not scheduled to carry people till 2014. So NASA is going to try to push that along to help shrink the time between the Shuttles Retirement and the CEV being used.

That being said, I am excited about this new CEV. I can't wait for it to be used, but at the same time, I'm saddened at the retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet. I have grown up with the shuttles. I remember watching the shuttles launch at school. I remember the first launch of the shuttle. I also remember watching the shuttle go from exciting to every day as Television stopped broadcasting all the launches and we are lucky for a report on the evening news that one had launched.

I remember asking to leave class to go to the library, knowing they had a television there so I could watch the shuttle launch, and while watching that launch having my excitement turn to sadness when I saw it explode after throttle up.

I understand it is time to retire the shuttle and create a new space vehicle. But I can't help but think of the sadness I'll feel when they finally do that.

T minus 5 years and counting.

Bicyclists!

Ok, that may be to harsh to group all people that ride bikes into that category. In fact, probably most true bicyclists don't do this, but why is it that people ride bicycles AGAINST the traffic?!?
I saw this on my way into work this morning. A grown man, not a child, riding their bike against traffic, during rush-hour!

Ok, everyone, can you say
"Walk against traffic, ride with traffic?"
I knew you could.

Tuesday, 4/19

Grrrrr
Before I start rambling, I am a software developer, so, if you start going glassy eye'd, skip to the next section.

Why can people not delete their code when they are done? I spent serveral hours today trying to clean up unused files. I found 106 files that we were no longer using in our application. If people would do that when they stopped using the files, I wouldn't have had to spend so much time on that mind numbing activity.

Also, I learned something new today. I was not aware that the strncpy function did not null terminate the string when copied. It only will put a null terminator if the string being copied is larger than its destination. I stumbled upon that while looking at Visual Studio 7 today. Now I'll have to spend some time going through our code to make sure we have everything else null terminated.

Soccer
My girl has her last High School soccer game tonight. I can't wait. She has been hurt the last week and a half, so hopefully her ankle will be up to the game.

Well, she played very well. She wasn't as fast as normal, but she is still having problems with her ankle. She did score a goal tonight!!! The game itself was horrible, but watching my girl play awesome was worth it!

Monday's Ramblings

Soccer stuff
I left work a bit early to go and have soccer pictures taken today. I can't wait to see how they turn out. Having 6 kids full of energy trying to stand still is something else.

Soccer has really gone pretty well so far. We are 2-1-3 with 2 games left to play. We do not officially keep score, but you know parents. Of course, there are many games that we aren't even sure when the game is over. Here is a picture of the kids. My son is in the middle. One of the boys wasn't there when I took this picture. I'll update it later when I get the "official" team picture in.


Photo taken before first game.

Last weeks Prom

I talked a bit on Saturday about my daughter getting ready for prom. Well, here is a picture we took before they left for prom.

I may joke about how long it took her to get ready, but she is beautiful. Course she is my daughter, so I am a bit biased.


My daughter and her date for the prom.

Sunny Saturday

This was a nice, warm (almost hot) spring day today.

Soccer!
Started out by coaching my son's soccer game today. We ended up tieing which is fine by me, but the best part of the whole day was watching my son score a goal today. 2 weeks in a row. I'm giddy. :)

Yard Work
Why does it always seem no matter what happens, Saturdays end up being yard work? Now, I dont always mind. I actually enjoy it most of the time, but it would be nice to do other things. On the bright side, the yard looks pretty good. The garden has been weeded and I was able to mulch the peas, which hopefully means I will not have to weed around them as much. And the pond really looks nice. It had been pretty dirty from the winter. Now my sholders hurt from the sun burn I got from being outside so much.

Prom night
It's prom night tonight. Watching girls get ready for such an event is crazy. I remember when i was in high school. I got my tux, cleaned the car, picked up the flowers, took a shower and got ready. With girls, it a couple day event. hehe

ehh

Well, thought I might start a blog. A friend has one, and he really enjoys it. Thought I might give it a try. who knows.