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Mon, 27 Dec 2004

At the mall.



posted at: 21:02 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Sat, 25 Dec 2004

Opening presents!



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Fri, 24 Dec 2004

Visions of sugar plums?



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Tue, 14 Dec 2004

Almost done with presents!



posted at: 17:59 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Sun, 12 Dec 2004

New camera phone.

I got a new camera phone last night, and I've written a quick script so that I can email myself pictures and have them automatically posted to my journal. This should be very useful during the holidays. A few years ago, I thought the idea of a camera phone was really dumb, but now I'm really digging the idea. The phone I got was the Motorola v710, which also supports bluetooth. So, now I'm trying to find a bluetooth card for my laptop. I called Dell a few days ago, and they told me that they do not carry any bluetooth products at all. So, I guess I'll have to do some shopping now.

Christmas shopping is nearly complete. We were out shopping for close to 11 hours last night, and I think we only have one or two gifts left to go. Our Christmas cards are now in, and we'll be mailing those out soon. The cards will have our picture on it. I put a copy of that picture on the front of my home page.

In other news, the council camping committee met last week. The committee voted in a split decision to raise camp fees by $10 next year. My vice-chief is working hard with his camping promotions committee to work on getting a much better promotion program out there than we have been doing in the past. Discussions continue with the history museum as well. The present idea is to gut out the present trading post and turn it into a new trading post / history museum.
posted at: 15:52 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Face painting at the mall.



posted at: 15:40 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Natalie on the train



posted at: 15:35 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Thu, 02 Dec 2004

Patchtrader.info sets a new record.

Patchtrader.info is now at 23,000 page views per month! I started that web site back in 1996 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Wagion Lodge #6. It has grown and evolved quite a bit since then. I'm really happy to see that so many people are using it.

In other scouting news, I was kind of bummed about November, not much happened last month in scouting. But this month seems to be quite the opposite. I'll be at the Council Camping Committee meeting on the 6th, and then I'll be at the Council Marketing Committee meeting on the 15th. My Vice-Chief is starting to get his plans and priorities together for the next year. It looks like two big agenda items for us this year will be Camping Promotions and the Lodge History committee.

At work, I've got some big projects that I'm in the process of designing right now. They will be released some time in 2005. I'm really enjoying the ability to work with some new technologies with these upcoming projects.

At home, we're still having problems with bed time. Natalie doesn't seem to get the idea of going to bed at night.


posted at: 21:08 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Sat, 27 Nov 2004

Christmas Time

Leanne started decorating the house for Christmas yesterday. We all put up the Christmas tree last night. Natalie helped decorate it. She really enjoyed that.

Today we are going to get a family picture taken. We will be using that picture for our Christmas cards this year.


posted at: 10:57 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Sun, 21 Nov 2004

The Polar Express.

We went to see "The Polar Express" tonight. I strongly recommend seeing this movie! It doesn't matter what kind of movies you like or how old you are, you will like seeing this one. The graphics and sound effects are great, and the story line is just as I remember my teacher reading it to me in grade school.

We went to the last showing of the night in Delmont, and there were about 5 other people in the theater. That was great, because it meant that Natalie could get up and Dance in aisles whenever a song came on, as she seems to enjoy doing whenever we go to a movie.

There were a lot of scenes in the movie that I think will probably loose a their majesty whenever this movie gets converted to television, so I strongly recommend seeing it in theaters. Many of the scenes try to illustrate enormous size of everything as seen through the eyes of a young boy. That works so much better on a big screen than on a television. There is also a 3-D version of this movie showing at the IMAX in Pittsburgh. I intend to go see it before the Christmas season is out.


posted at: 01:28 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Sat, 13 Nov 2004

Happy "your domains are no longer safe" day.

Now that the deadline has come and passed for the new ICANN Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy, we can all celebrate the loss of security over our domain names. Under this new policy, the basic premise is if somebody pretending to be you attempts to transfer a domain name of yours into their premise, the correct procedure is to first allow the transfer and then sort it out later. Meanwhile, the hacker is enjoying the benefits of the domain name, while the real registrant is not.

Backers of this new policy claim that things are not all that bleak because the person doing the transfer still has to prove their identity to the gaining registrar. I guess they've never heard of a little something called identity theft. Not to mention the fact that this part of the policy hasn't changed. It has always been the case that you had to prove your identity to the gaining registrar and hasn't that gone swimmingly so far.

I guess it will be nice that registrars that have found devious ways to prevent domain transfers will no longer be able to do so through misleading e-mails. But, wait... nope, it turns out that all they had to do was put the domains in lock status before the new policy took effect. So the very companies this policy was meant to foil have already worked their way around the policy through a loophole, and now the rest of the registrars that have been doing things right up until now pay the price that comes with not screwing the little guy.


posted at: 03:14 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Wed, 10 Nov 2004

Getting ready for the holidays.

Leanne, Natalie, and I went to the Mall on Saturday. It was a busy day. Natalie got her picture taken with Santa. Leanne did some shopping. I was playing a game at the mall called Dance, Dance Revolution. Its very similar to a game called "Pump it up" that I enjoy playing at Dave and Busters. Apparently, people at the mall don't know that the game is for adults also, because Leanne tells me that there were quite a few comments from passers by about a person my age playing kids games. Ehh, whatever.

After the Mall, we went to the movie theater and watched "The Incredibles". It was ok for a kid's movie. It had a few funny moments, but was mostly geared for a younger audience. Natalie was really good for the first half of the movie, but she eventually lost attention and wanted to play in the aisle. I guess some other people lost attention also, because right at the end of the move, a fight broke out between two guys about two rows directly ahead of us. At one point, one of the guys would have fallen directly on Natalie except I had already picked her up in anticipation of getting out of the way.

In other news, pairNIC just released it's new multi-year transfer feature. I've been working on that code for many many months, so I'm happy to be done with that.

The OA is going well. We had the officer's training weekend a few weekends ago. I didn't really have all that much time to meet with the officer that I'm going to be advising, but this is his second year in the same position, so I suspect he isn't really going to need all that much help.


posted at: 01:05 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Mon, 04 Oct 2004

OA & Steelers.

This was a busy weekend. Last thursday, one of the lawyers that we use at pair unexpectedly sent me two clubhouse tickets for the Steelers game vs. the Cincinati Bengals. It put me at a little bit of an inconvenience because I had already planned on going to the OA weekend and then watching Natalie on Sunday so that Leanne could have a day to herself.

So, I took Friday off of work and let Leanne go out on Friday. She went out to eat, and went shopping. Natalie and I went to the park and played at the playground for a few hours. Leanne was late getting home, so I did not get up to the OA weekend until very late.

The OA weekend went very good. I recently bought a cable so that I could connect my laptop to the internet over my cell phone. And since I get weekends for free on my phone, we were able to connect to the internet all weekend and work on the web site. By the end of the weekend, the committee had the Wagion web site already updated with news about the weekend, so that's one less thing that needed worked on when I got home!

This was also the weekend that the OA elected its new officers for next year. With the change of administration, I'm going to get a promotion. I'll no longer be advising the website committee. Instead, I'll be advising the administrative decision of the lodge (which includes the website committee), and I'll be an associate lodge adviser.

On Sunday, I hurried up and got home quickly. I took Dad out to a brunch at the Allegheny Club (pair's lawyer paid for that also), and then we went to the game. It was a really good game. After that, I came back home and caught up on all the sleep that I didn't get Friday or Saturday night.


posted at: 11:03 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Sat, 25 Sep 2004

Moving time

Chances are very good that I'll be moving into the new office space at work on Monday. I'm looking forward to this a lot. This new space is going to contain just the programmers, which means less disruptions. Additionally, there will finally be enough room to hire the additional programming staff that we desperately need.


posted at: 00:18 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Mon, 20 Sep 2004

Whiffenpoofs
Besides being a really interesting word, "Whiffenpoofs" is also the name of an a cappella singing group -- The "Yale Whiffenpoofs". I saw them singing on the "Holy Night" episode of "The West Wing". So, I purchased two of their CD's. Their music is really good, I recommend it.
posted at: 22:38 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Wed, 08 Sep 2004

Big day for Natalie

Tuesday was a big day for Natalie. It was her very first day of pre-school! Leanne tells me that she seemed to have enjoyed it. It took Natalie about a half-hour before she was ok with being their without her mom. She started out clinging to Leanne, but then finally started playing with stickers with her teacher. By the time Leanne came back to get her, Natalie did not want to leave.

That evening, we took Natalie to my boss's anniversary party. It was held at Dave and Busters. The last time we took Natalie to D&B, we were able to stay about 20 minutes before it was clearly time to go. Last night we stayed from about 7:30 until about 11:30, which was probably 45 minutes too long for Natalie. Unfortunately, we had just ordered some food when she started geting cranky. Nevertheless, she had a great time. She really enjoyed playing all of the games. Next time, maybe we'll teach her that they are even more fun if you put money in them.


posted at: 10:53 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Sat, 04 Sep 2004

Expanding

Rumors are that the office space that we've been waiting for at work the past 2 or 3 years might actually happen now. I've gotten to the point now where I really try to avoid getting excited about such things because it usually ends in disappointment. However, some people in the office have already been moved to temp space, and I've been told the agreement for the additional space for the programmers has been finalized. So, maybe there's hope.

We're also advertising a new programming job opening. So, that is a good sign as well. We were supposed to get 4 new people by this Summer, but that all fell apart when the office space fell behind schedule. One new person isn't going to be enough to get us caught up with the work load, but its better than no new people.


posted at: 02:21 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Mon, 30 Aug 2004

Action packed weekend.

On Saturday, we went to Idlewild park. It was one of the monthly outings that pair does. We had a good time. We spent most of the day at the pool. I was surprised at the number of people from pair that had never been to Idlewild, yet still had an opinion of the park. I didn't see anybody I knew all day.

Sunday was a slow day. Leanne wasn't feeling well, so I took care of Natalie all day. Leanne felt a little better in the evening, so we went swimming at Loyalhanna lake.


posted at: 08:17 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Thu, 26 Aug 2004

Car-Jacking
It turns out that on Monday, while I was out to lunch, somebody was car-jacked right in the parking lot that I normally park in at work. I suspect now that this new south-side works project is starting to pick up steam, the neighborhood is not going to be nearly as safe as it used to be.
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Fri, 09 Jul 2004

One Small Step for Man...

Finally got my student loan paid off. (Yah!)


posted at: 13:14 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Tue, 06 Jul 2004

A long weekend

On Sunday we had Dad, Diana, and Grandma over. Then, we went out to watch fireworks. On Monday, Tammy and her family came in and we went to the zoo.

It's been a long weekend, and I'm ready to something relaxing, like getting back to work.


posted at: 01:39 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Thu, 17 Jun 2004

YAPC Day 2

Leanne and I went to see Harry Potter last night with many other conference attendees. The atmosphere was a bit too much for Leanne. She isn't used to being around that many computer people in one place. The movie itself was decent. I liked some of the effects in the movie.

Today, I've been attending classes that deal with building scalable large projects. A lot of the stuff I'm hearing is stuff that I've heard before, so I haven't been all that impressed. The biggest things that I'm taking away from this is reference materials so that I can go do more research on my own.


posted at: 14:53 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Wed, 16 Jun 2004

YAPC Keynotes

Just got done sitting through the intro and keynotes. It was good for pair, we got two mentions including one applause. All in all, there were some interesting points, but everything could have been made much shorter.


posted at: 12:03 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

YAPC, Morning #1

Arrived in Buffalo last night. The trip coming up was a very easy drive. The hotel I'm staying in is very nice. It has wireless Ethernet, which is a real plus for me. From what I can tell, I'm about a mile and a half away from the campus where YAPC is going to take place.

One thing I did note about this city is that it appears that everybody goes to bed way to early around here. At 10:30, it was nearly impossible to find some place to eat.

The weather is looking fair so far. There is a chance of rain in the evening, but the day is supposed to be nice. Temperature will be in the high seventies all day.


posted at: 06:29 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Mon, 14 Jun 2004

Happy Birthday to me.

Today is my birthday. Don't really plan on doing anything today except getting ready to to go YAPC tomorrow.

I went to the section NE-4B conclave last weekend and had a very good time. I taught a class on the proper building of a web site committee. I think there were some people that got some good use out of it.


posted at: 11:11 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Fri, 21 May 2004

I hate weather.com

I have lost all faith in weather.com to accurately predict the weather. Every time I go to their site, they've reversed what it was they were saying just a few hours ago. First they say its going to rain, then they say its going to be clear, then they say its going to rain again. I suppose they figure with a strategy like that, they are bound to be right one of the times.

Unfortunately, it means that I can not rely on them when planning anything at all. :(


posted at: 12:29 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Tue, 18 May 2004

A very bad day.

Monday wasn't such a good day for me. I chipped my tooth Sunday night. When I called the dentist's office Monday morning, I discovered that my dentist just got married and was on his honeymoon. So, I'm stuck with a chipped tooth until Thursday.

We had just found out that Adelphia now had DVR's in our area, so on Monday morning I drove to Adelphia's office to pick up my new DVR. While leaving the parking lot at Adelphia, somebody ran into the back of my Blazer. Later that day, I got a phone call from Leanne. It turns out that somebody ran into her at McDonalds about an hour later.

After a very long day at work, I came home to discover that we had a bad thunderstorm Monday evening and the cable was out. So I didn't even get to use the DVR.

If Tuesday is anything like Monday, I intend to officially declare this week as a disaster and hide under my bed for the rest of the week. Oh wait, I have a water bed... never mind.


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Thu, 13 May 2004

Perl Monger Talk

I gave a talk at the Pittsburgh Perl Mongers tonight on DBD::AnyData. My slides are available online if anybody wants to see them.


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Sun, 09 May 2004

Spring Nature Walk
The spring nature walk for Wagion Lodge 6 was yesterday. The nature walk is where the Lodge hosts an event for the cub scouts. For many of these cubs, it is there very first time visiting a camp. They get a really great program and have an opportunity to learn all sorts of things. I think the event that will stick in the minds of these kids for years to come is the live bear that the PA Game commission brought in. The scouts watched as the game commission tagged the bear, and some scouts even got to touch it. I have a bunch of Pictures of all the things that happened at the nature walk in my picture gallery.
posted at: 02:54 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Sun, 02 May 2004

Zoo trip.

We went to the zoo yesterday. It was the day after our membership expired. We had not intended on renewing this year, but one we got there and saw the line for non-members, we decided to go ahead and renew.

The day went very well. Natalie enjoyed just about everything. The weather was beautiful.


posted at: 11:34 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Fri, 30 Apr 2004

Technology and the BSA just don't mix.

I attended a training seminar today from some "new" software that the scout council is going to be using. Its actually software that has been around since at least 1994. The training was little more than a pep rally explaining all of the stuff you can do with this software. There was actually no "training" at all.

To be honest, the whole experience put a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth. It is little wonder that the BSA sees the value in technology when they have no idea what it has to offer. I'd love to be able to bring these guys another 10 years up to speed, but I can tell that there's no way that is going to happen because they just don't know enough to know what they should be wanting...


posted at: 01:14 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Thu, 22 Apr 2004

My new CPU Case

Here's a picture of the new CPU Case I got from xoxide.com They say that this is a "totally clear case" and that when you shine UV light on it, it shines red. Well, to me, this looks Orange. I guess totally clear depends on your definition of clear. I would call it tinted. Here are some more pictures
posted at: 00:30 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Thu, 15 Apr 2004

Image theft.

Looks like somebody is stealing bandwidth from me:

http://www.privateerpress.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=15332&st=50&

I haven't yet decided if I want to be flattered or upset just yet. I'm debating about doing some mod_rewrite action. That way, when people hot-link to me, they'll get something totally different than what they expected.


posted at: 04:17 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Mon, 12 Apr 2004

Mall Swimming, Easter Egg Hunts, and Painting.

On Saturday, we went to the Mall so that Leanne could get her nails done (it was the compromise for getting the CPU case). While Leanne was getting her nails done, Natalie and I walked around the mall. Natalie rode on the train, and ate a pretzel. Natalie also wanted to throw coins in the fountain. I told Natalie that we would do that when her mom got done with her nails.

When Leanne's nails were done, we all went to get a bite to eat. And then on the way out, we stopped to let Natalie thow a few coins in the fountain. Natalie was running back and forth from one side of the fountain to the other in order to decide where she wanted to throw the coins. I was guarding the one side, and Leanne was guarding the other. Unfortunately, Leanne wasn't doing that good of a job at guarding, because Natalie fell in the fountain and was completely soaked. I had to buy a towel at Kaufmans just to dry her off.

Fortunately, Sunday was a much nicer day. Even though it was a bit cooler, we had a good time at Leanne's parents. After church, we had dinner, and then Leanne and her cousin had an easter egg hunt. When things were all said and done, Natalie had found about $8. Natalie had a really good time playing with her cousin. In fact, we had a hard time getting her to leave. She cried the entire way home until we she fell asleep.

Today had been a day of painting. So far, uneventful. The hardest part has been keeping Natalie out of the paint.


posted at: 19:53 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Wed, 07 Apr 2004

Fancy blinking lights.

My new CPU Case is on its way. I chose Red with UV Cathodes and blue fans. This, when coupled with a dual-Pentium cpu that I'm getting from work will allow me to get rid of two ugly systems I have and dramatically improve the aesthetics of my home office.


posted at: 13:45 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Sun, 04 Apr 2004

I want the moon daddy.

Tonight, Natalie insisted that I lift her up so that she could get the moon. She became very upset when she could not have it. The tantrum that followed lasted for a solid 20 minutes. We were eventually able to settle her down by telling her that when she gets older, she can become an astronaut and go get the moon herself.

Apparently, she was satisfied with this answer. However, she does keep checking to make sure that it is still there.
posted at: 00:26 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Sun, 28 Mar 2004

Back from NLATS

I got up on Friday morning around 4:00 am, and left the house around 5:00. A fellow scouter and I travelled to New Jersey to attend the National Lodge Adviser Training Conference.

Along the way, we made a side-trip to see the world trade center site. Honestly, the hole in the ground wasn't very moving. However, the displays set up at St. Paul's Chapel were very moving. When I saw the Teddy bear display for the children of the victims, my eyes were very moist.

Then we went on to NLATS, which was a very exciting experience. Many members of the National OA committee were there, and it was a great opportunity to learn the correct way of doing things from the ones in the know. The problem with the OA is that it is so big and so disperse that rumors float so easily, and the difference between the real way of doing things and the way some person thinks things should happen blurs so quickly. Any opportunity to talk to somebody very high up is golden.

So now I'm back, and loaded with all sorts of great ideas. I hope the opportunity will come along where I will be able to try some of them.


posted at: 19:56 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Thu, 25 Mar 2004

One down, one to go.

I just got back from Unit Commissioner basic training. It was an interesting course. It gave me more of an appreciation for the behind the scenes people. I honestly didn't have much of an idea of what a commissioner was before tonight. I thought that these were just two or three people that helped the district out and occasionally went to visit troops. The truth is that there is an entire mass of dedicated people working very hard behind the scenes. These people don't just visit the troops. There is a lot that commissioners do which I never even thought about before. I learned a lot about what a commissioner does. Honestly, it doesn't sound like something I'd be good at.

However, tomorrow morning I head to the National Lodge Adviser Training Seminar (NLATS). I'm really excited to go to that training. There are a lot of things that I hope to learn, and I hope that it helps my chances of one day being lodge adviser.


posted at: 23:33 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Fri, 19 Mar 2004

Adelphia gets a silver star.

Note: That's a silver star, not a gold star. They would have gotten a gold star, but when I called them, they made me wait forever to talk to somebody.

I had to call their tech support line today because my cable modem somehow became de-provisioned in their system and wasn't letting me browse out of their network. I spoke to a guy named Ramon who helped me out. He was a pretty intelligent guy. And the really nice thing was that he actually treated me like an intelligent guy. He didn't give me a hard time about the fact that I was running a real operating system (as opposed to a Microsoft OS), and he didn't give me a hard time about having a router. Instead, I told him exactly what was I was seeing, and he solved the problem. He didn't make me do twenty stupid steps like "Turn the power off and turn it back on."

So even though it was a glitch on their side that caused my modem to be de-provisioned in the first place, it was nice to talk to a tech that didn't mind talking to other techs.


posted at: 11:08 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Thu, 18 Mar 2004

Open source stuff

It is always fun to get your name attached to something somewhere. I usually do that kind of stuff in spurts. In the past week or so, I've been excelling at it, it would seem.

I just finished writing up a few paragraphs for a person that is co-authoring O'Reilly's next version of the DBI book. This came after I sent him a slew of bug reports for one of his modules that I had discovered while working on pairNIC. If it doesn't get cut between now and publishing time, there will hopefully be a small case study written by me included in the next edition of that book. I guess I'll end up having to buy a copy.

I'm also going to be giving a talk at the next Pittsburgh Perl Mongers about a coding technique that we are using within pairNIC.

So, I guess it has been a big week for me and getting my name out in the open-source community.

In other news, NLATS is just around the corner and so is commissioner training. I'm probably going to end up being assistant disctrict commissioner for the Busy Run distrctict. I'm going to help troops install some new scouting software on their computers.

And in other news, I've finally beat minesweeper at the expert level.


posted at: 02:24 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Mon, 15 Mar 2004

What noise does mommy make?

"Natalie, what noise does a puppy make?"
"Bark bark bark"

"Natalie, wake noise does a kitty make?"
"Meow meow meow"

"Natalie, what noise does a birdy make?"
"Tweet tweet tweet"

"Natalie, what noise does mommy make?"
"No no no no no"


posted at: 11:06 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Sun, 29 Feb 2004

The passion of Mel Gibson

Leanne and I took her parents to see "Passion of The Christ" today. After seeing the movie, I'm left wondering how much of the outrage around this movie is real outrage and how much of it started as just a publicity stunt.

There seem to be two major gripes going around about this movie: the graphic violence, and the way that the Jews are depicted. Really, if you think that either of those are Mel Gibson's fault, I'd like to suggest that you read the books that his screenplay is based on. Gibson's screenplay is certainly graphic, so is the Bible. Gibson certainly doesn't hide blame from the Jews, neither does the Bible. That's not to say that Gibson plants the blame on the Jews alone. In fact, I'd say that if anything, the role of the priests is minimized in the movie.

It certainly wasn't the kind of movie that I'm going to let Natalie see until she's really mature enough to understand why everything happened like it did. But it is the kind of movie that I'd like to go back and see again for myself.

In summary, if you liked the book, you'll probably like the movie.


posted at: 20:46 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Fri, 27 Feb 2004

The banquet is almost here.

As I said previously, the Wagion Lodge #6 annual fellowship banquet is this weekend. I'm looking forward to it. As committee adviser, it is my job to make sure the youth chairman is doing a good job. Luckily for me, this guy doesn't need much help. He's doing a great job on his own.

I'm looking forward to relaxing and talking with people that I haven't seen in a while. No doubt I'll get into some kind of debate about something with somebody, but at least I won't be doing it while trying to keep the committee running at the same time. As far as the committee is concerned, my only involvement is to give a very quick little talk at the committee meeting and then let them have at it. I have slides of my talk available on my web-site if anybody is interested in seeing what I'll be talking about.

Work is kind of hectic right now. Now that I've been promoted to "Lead software developer" for pairNIC, I've been doing a lot of planning. It seems like I'm working long hours but not really getting anywhere. That's mostly because most of what I'm doing right now is just planning things out. My number one priority at this point is to be sure that when we hire some people to work on pairNIC that I'm prepared enough that I don't look like an idiot.


posted at: 20:46 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Tue, 24 Feb 2004

Hello Mr. Sun!

If you have any faith in weather.com, this upcoming week looks like it might be a very favorable change! It may reach up into the 50's by the weekend.

That will be great because this Saturday is the banquet for Wagion Lodge #6. The banquet always seems to go by so quickly for me. There is always so much to do and not very much time to do it. I'm looking forward to the banquet, though. I've been advising my present chairman about a half a year now, and I'm very impressed. He's the kind of person that goes and does things for himself without having to be guided. He has really taken charge of making sure the committee is ready for the banquet. My role in the entire thing has been minimized to a 10 minute "You guys are doing great" speech during a committee meeting.

In other news, the great bedtime struggle continues at home. Natalie is slowly getting the idea that when the lights go out, that means get in bed.


posted at: 20:49 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Sat, 21 Feb 2004

Showbiz pizza.

Today, Leanne and I took Natalie to Chuck E. Cheese. We invited along a co-worker along. He has a little girl the same age as Natalie. They had a great time. We had an ok time. The place was just way too crowded and its no fun chasing after a two-year old that thinks she can just go anywhere on her own. Especially when she can squeeze through the crowd and we can't. The other problem I have with that place is what extremely little stuff they have there for very young children gets overrun by bigger kids, and the staff doesn't do anything about it.


posted at: 22:06 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Sun, 15 Feb 2004

A Valentines day present from Natalie.

Natalie gave Leanne and I a Valentines day present last night. It was somewhat of a miracle as she actually was asleep in her own bed, by herself, and before midnight! Leanne and I hope to find a way to convert this behavior from a rare phenomenon into a habit.


posted at: 10:55 | permanent link to this entry | Comments:

Wed, 21 Jan 2004

Flu season.

I organized a ski trip for pair last weekend.. The weather was beautiful, skiing was great. Except I didn't do much skiing. I spent most of my time going in and out of the Lodge waiting for people to show up. I would go outside, get snow all over me, then go inside, where it would melt, then I would go outside so my cold clothes could freeze.. rinse, lather, repeat..

I've been stuck at home now for three days with a really bad flu. I'm anxious to get back to work.

Speaking of work, I just got a new title: "Lead pairNIC programmer". It is now my job to coordinate all of the software development that goes into pairNIC.

The OA is doing well also. I'll be attending the National Lodge Adviser Training Seminar (NLATS) at Camp Alpine, New Jersey some time in March.


posted at: 13:49 | permanent link to this entry | Comments: