Sarcastic Picnic

Fox and Zoey send their Christmas greetings!

2010-12-25T15:17:00.002-05:00

New Words

2009-11-21T23:26:00.001-05:00

I will occasionally (sometimes by accident) come up with new words for my wife's amusement. I hereby submit the following new words I've created to be added to the 2010 Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

Electronical - Something that's not only electronic in nature, but also electrical.

Misunderestimate - When it's more than just simply underestimating, it's misunderestimating.

Vapidiot - A vapid idiot. Usually applies to 20-something reality show contestants, or other fake "real drama" TV shows.

Here are the new words for 2009: http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/newwords09.htm

Harmonica Duet

2009-02-18T22:41:00.002-05:00

I gave Fox my old harmonica a few months ago. He loves it, and when his cousin Dylan came to visit in October, we gave him one as well. Here are the two boys playing a duet over the phone.

Baby names my wife has rejected.

2009-01-31T14:03:00.005-05:00

Number two is on the way, and of course, thoughts turn to potential baby names. I found a bunch that I thought were cool (if a little odd), but Michelle SOUNDLY rejected.

Speed
Sterling
Hudson (Wouldn't that be cool, people could refer to him as "The Fabulous Hudson Rutherford"...yeah, it's kind of dumb, I know. I still like it.)
DeSoto
Drexel
Roland
Bear (I wasn't actually serious about this one, I just wanted to see her reaction.)
Oscar
Felix
Magnus

Fox was so perfect, we both instantly loved it. Hopefully we will find another name like that for the second child. (Oh, and I'm assuming it's a boy...Rutherfords tend to make boys. Also we have a pretty good list of girls names we still like.)

Several of our favorite names were already taken by our friends. Noah, Owen, and Holden are all names we had picked out long ago, but we waited too long and lost out! If you have any suggestions for cool boy names, please post them in the comments. (But don't be upset if we don't use them, we are VERY picky!)

Day 1 of our "Switchover" - an iPhone saved my life.

2009-01-16T21:14:00.004-05:00

Some of you know that the last year at my work has been building up to this weekend. We were purchased by a MUCH larger company, and we have been planning for a year to move our networks, databases, phone systems, PC's, and printers over to the new system. Well, this weekend was it. Being the only IT guy on site (thanks, Jeremy!), I knew I'd be here all weekend. But, they sent a systems tech from the Orlando office, and a cabling guy from another office to help me. And "help me" they did. They almost helped me out of a job.

Friday night, after close of business, we started moving over cables. I gave the tech very explicit instructions to unplug ONLY the yellow cables in the TOP HALF of the rack. (We would later be running cables from here to the new switch, so the short yellow patch cables had to go.) You can see those cables below:

Now, do you see those long green and yellow cables in the middle? Those are VERY important - they ARE our current network. And since all of our production databases are sitting in that room, they need to be transferred to the new system in Delaware. This is PRODUCTION data, that HAS to be correct, or someone will lose a head.

Anyway, while I was out of the room, the cabling guy walked into the room to see what was going on. He said to the tech "Don't worry, all of their old systems are being decommissioned, so just unplug everything". The tech decided to follow his directions instead of mine, and just yanked everything out.

I felt a disturbance in the Force, as if dozens of servers were crying out in terror, and then were suddenly silenced. (Actually, I just heard the alarm system beeping a warning.) I ran into the server room and freaked out. After calling an emergency meeting with both "offenders", we tried in vain to figure out where everything went. Nothing worked.

I knew I had a diagram of the network on one of the servers, but it wasn't connected to anything (due to our network collapsing when those cables were pulled). So, I sat down at it, and found the diagram. It was a PDF...and there was no PDF viewer on that server. So, I grabbed my USB stick...but that server was so old, it DIDN'T HAVE A USB PORT. (Thanks for keeping old crappy machines around, Jeremy.) It only had a floppy drive! So, I found a floppy disc (Thanks for not ever throwing anything away, Jeremy.) and copied the file over.

We went searching for another machine with a floppy, but they don't install those in PC's anymore, so it took us 15 minutes of crawling under every desk in the office before we finally found a floppy drive. I logged in, opened up the file...but it was out of date and no longer correct.

My boss called me shortly after that..."We can't move over the databases tonight if the network is down"...I know, I know. I'm running out of options at this point, though. I considered calling Jeremy (Thanks again for moving on to better things, Jeremy), but I didn't want to bug him on a Friday night.

The tech (who I will refer to henceforth as "Mr. Random Unplugger") did have a brilliant idea, though. When he and his boss visited our site a few months ago, they took pictures of all the racks and servers in the room. So, he called his boss, and had him forward those pics to his iPhone. Mr. Random Unplugger then bought up the pics on his iPhone, rotated, and zoomed in on them until we could see exactly which cable went where. We didn't get it exactly right, though. Still no worky.

About an hour after the initial meltdown of our network, we were all still standing there scratching our heads and testing ports. The cabling guy (who I will refer to henceforth as "The Un-cabler"), said "let me see that again", and took the iPhone for one last look. "Ah ha!", The Un-cabler said...I see the problem. We had one cable in the wrong spot...once it was corrected, our network came back to life, data started moving, and I passed out from relief.

OK, I didn't pass out, but it would have been understandable if I had. There has been a TON of pressure on us to get this done this weekend. "Heads will roll", I've been told, if this does not go through.

The crises was averted, so we got back to work. We had to replace those little yellow cables with the 12-foot cables we were shipped...they were being plugged into a new rack off to the right of that picture. We quickly ran into the next problem of the night - we needed 15-foot cables, not 12-footers. The Un-cabler got on the phone and kicked off an emergency conference call. It was decided to drop ship us 15-foot cables by Next Day Air. Also, we had to go ahead and use the 12-footers because the phones and terminals needed to be installed the next morning, and they were depending on those cables to be in place. So we had to just stretch them across empty space and leave them dangling in mid air. It reminded me of this...I wish I had taken a picture.

Anyway, Mr. Random Unplugger and The Un-cabler did indeed prove to be hard workers and good at their jobs as the weekend wore on, but I wanted to kill them that night. In a purely Christian way, of course.

Stay tuned for Saturday's exploits in the next post.

Storytime With Fox

2008-12-29T23:40:00.002-05:00

One more Fox video, this one is for his Mommy. While she was away in South Carolina, Fox wanted to read me a story about Mommies. The book is called "Mudpie For Mommy", and it's about a little pig who tries to gather up nice things to give to his Mommy on her birthday.

Merry Christmas from Fox

2008-12-24T00:18:00.002-05:00

Fox wanted to say Merry Christmas to his family!

Fox is walking!

2008-12-12T00:00:00.005-05:00

Finally, he's walking around by himself. For the past two weeks, he's been learning how to crawl, then walk again. He's gotten to the point where he could walk fine, but had to hold one of our hands just for reassurance.

He had taken a step or two without holding on, but as soon as he realized it, he would either sit down or cry and want to be held. I guess he just didn't have enough confidence in walking to try it by himself, even though we've been encouraging him constantly.

Tuesday night, Michelle covertly videotaped him walking across the living room. He was so engrossed in playing with his toys, he didn't think about what he was doing.

Later, she told him he could walk by himself, and he said "No, I can't!". So she brought out the video camera and SHOWED him the video above. Once he realized that was him and that he could indeed walk by himself, he was OK with it. He's been walking by himself ever since.

He still looks like a little old man when he walks, but he's getting stronger every day.

Silly Band Names

2008-12-08T21:18:00.000-05:00

I considered titling this entry "Even More AWESOMENESS", but I realized most of these aren't actually awesome, just odd.

I was cleaning out our office/guest bedroom this week and ran across a list of band names I had compiled - probably about 8-10 years ago.

It was a full page of names I had written out, some from a list someone else had compiled, some from a band-name-generator I used, and some names I just made up.

Here are some of the best:

The Other Dilemmas
Hold the Humility
Delightfully Uncouth
The Knicker-Wearers
Not Just For Whitey
The Fringe Jackets
Mr. Smarty-Pants
The Emperors of the Milky Way Galaxy
The Band That Shot Liberty Valance
The Band From U.N.C.L.E. (My personal favorite)
Mommy Don't Let Your Kids Join The Sanhedrin
Jive Talkin' Turkeys
Last of the Red Hot Doggies
Glass Darkly
Shorn Like Bjorn
The Khaki Slackers
Schrödinger's Cats (This one was for Michael)

I did some Googling on the interwebs, and found that some of these have actually become real bands. Awesome.

So, help me come up with some more silly names. Respond in the comments...

This post is made of AWESOME.

2008-11-18T20:56:00.002-05:00

Female readers, you may just want to skip this post entirely. This is for the guys. I felt it was time to celebrate what is AWESOME.

The internet can be a huge time-waster, but sometimes you run across sheer AWESOMENESS. You can click the pictures to see them full size:

Star Wars characters rocking out is AWESOME.

Monkeys (of all kinds) are AWESOME.

Very large jet engines mounted to very small cars are AWESOME.

That little bird is so cool it surfs on the back of a hawk. Yep. AWESOME.

A bus jumping motorcycles instead of the other way around is AWESOME. The huge ball of fire only makes it MORE AWESOMER.

TRIPLE AWESOME.

This guy has guts. AWESOME guts.

Nick Fury's middle name is AWESOME.

Secretariat winning by 31 lengths and destroying all records in his path. Sheer AWESOMENESS.

We sent a ROBOT to ANOTHER PLANET and claimed it in the name of AWESOME.

A guy doing a flip over a barbed-wire fence while throwing an axe. Double-AWESOME.

And before you ask - yes, all I did is steal these random images from the interwebs. But, if you've run across any pictures of PURE AWESOMENESS, post a comment and include them.

Broken Bones and Halloween

2008-11-01T21:46:00.008-04:00

As most of you already knew, Fox broke his right leg (his femur) two weeks ago. That's his X-Ray above. He's in a body cast from his armpits to his ankles...see Michelle's blog for more details if by some chance any of this was news to you.

The rest of this blog post will be in reverse chronological order, just because I feel like doing it that way today.

Anyway, we were in Orlando for Halloween yesterday, and we decided to dress Fox up as a mummy. Hey, he was already 80% of the way there, so fifty cents worth of toilet paper and he was done!

Earlier, he went with his cousin Dylan to school and carved a pumpkin:

Michelle and Fox were actually in Orlando for a week while I stayed here and worked. That was a long week for me! I don't like being away from my family that long. But Fox was having fun with his cousin:

And the week before THAT, Shannon had brought Dylan up here to Tallahassee to hang out and give Michelle some help...especially during the day while I'm working. We set up Fox's new fish tank for him, and it's been quite a good distraction.

I'm doing the "hundred".

2008-08-21T15:57:00.005-04:00

A couple of years ago, I traded a small freezer to my friend Jeremy for his weight bench. I worked out diligently for a while, and then the bench became a nice place to stack boxes and junk. Until a few weeks ago, I've let that be my excuse for not working out, and put off doing anything until we could clean that back room up and I could finally get back to the weight bench.

Then a few weeks ago, I decided this excuse was just foolishness. I don't need a weight bench to get into better shape, so I started thinking about exercises I can do without paying a gym subscription or devoting half a room to some piece of equipment. I found a bunch of other folks doing the Hundred Push up challenge, so I figured that was a good place to start.

Basically, you see how many push ups you can do in a row (no breaks!), and use that base number to judge your current level of fitness. (I did 13.) Then you do a 6 week program that should get you to 100 push ups. I think the program is actually a little too aggressive, and my goal is not to get to 100 consecutive push ups in 6 weeks. I just want to be able to do 100 total push ups in one sitting, with a few breaks in the middle.

After three weeks, I'm up to 75.

I also took the small dumbbells from the weight bench and added in bicep curls, and stomach crunches. I'm planning on finding a place in the back yard to install a pull up bar as well.

This seems like a good start, and I've definitely noticed the results already!

The best part is when I was doing the push ups in the living room, and Fox comes running in right in the middle of one and lays down underneath me and laughs at me.

So - lesson learned. You don't need an expensive gym membership or fancy equipment to get in shape. I wouldn't call this a full body workout by any means - there's a lot missing from this type of program. But, it's helping me to get back into shape, and that's what I needed.

Potty humor

2008-08-18T22:28:00.003-04:00

Fox is potty training. This is a good thing, but if you read Michelle's post, (or ever tried to potty train a toddler) you'll know there is always some drama that comes with it.

Here's my story.

Saturday was "Daddy time" with Fox. Michelle was at Carey's shower, so I got to spend all morning just running around the house, playing trucks and trains, and wrestling. It was so much fun.

Just before lunch, I go to change his diaper, and he tells me he wants to pee...on the "big potty". So, we bypass his little toddler potty, and I put his step stool in front of the big potty, and help him stand there, facing the toilet. He toots, then giggles and says "excuse me". This is perfectly normal. He doesn't pee, so I put him in his diaper and we go eat lunch at the table. As I'm sitting there watching him eat, I look down at my bare feet, and notice something very odd...there's brown stuff on my...oh dear. This is bad. There is poop on my toe.

POOP.

ON MY TOE.

As I'm saying "gross!" and trying to hobble over to the paper towels, Fox laughs and says "I pooped on Daddy's toe!". Then, he sees some more poop on the floor and exclaims "I pooped on the floor!".

As I backtrack, and try and figure out what happened, I realized...Fox didn't just toot when we were in the bathroom...he pooped. On my toe. I looked, and there it was...a tidy little pile of poop on the step stool. (Pun certainly NOT intended.)

Luckily, the poop was limited to the step stool, my foot, and the spot on the floor in the kitchen.

At church the next day, Fox proudly told anyone who would listen that he pooped on Daddy's toe. Michelle finds that hilarious. Of course she would, it wasn't her toe.

A Franciscan Prayer

2008-08-11T12:00:00.003-04:00

Craig Groeschel spoke at the 2008 Willow Creek Leadership Conference, which I attended last week. God did a lot of work there, in me and in others. There is too much to process at the moment, but Craig shared a Franciscan Prayer that kind of sums up a lot of it:

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain in to joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

Vacation - Part 3

2008-06-04T00:11:00.010-04:00

The petting Zoo portion didn't really have many animals to pet, but there were a few goats that were friendly enough.

Fox just loves Rachel Poole...

The Zoo crew minus myself.

On the way back, we got flagged for an extra security screening in the Nashville airport. We were already running late, but they made us stand in a large glass room while they went through our carry-on luggage. They patted us down (even Fox!) and tested everything for bomb residue, or drugs or something. We were really nervous by this point - Michelle was sure we would miss our flight. When they finally gave us our stuff back and let us go, we hurriedly got to the plane and boarded. I'm strapping Fox in when Michelle tells me to turn off my cell phone. It was then I realized that they never returned my cell phone or wallet to me at the security screening! Michelle took off running to get them back. The woman at the gate said she couldn't hold the plane, and the she only had two minutes. Michelle took off her shoes and sprinted to the security desk, had to show her ID to get my wallet and cell phone back, and sprinted back just in time for the gate to close. During this time, I'm getting Fox settled and trying to figure out how we are going to manage the rest of the trip with Michelle stranded in Nashville.

When she gets back on the plane finally, she's out of breath and nearly in tears. She collapses into the seat, and just about passes out. I tell her that she's the most wonderful wife ever and that she can have anything she wants when we get to our layover in Memphis.

She decided on BBQ pork and a Starbucks coffee.

Luckily, the rest of the trip was uneventful. Other than that one little snag, the entire vacation was wonderful, and Michelle managed to keep our costs down to less than $150. I don't know of anyone else who could have managed that!

A few days after we got back, I decided to break out the bicycle, since Fox's head is finally big enough to fit into the helmet we bought him last year.

Michelle is growing a BUNCH of stuff in the two garden boxes we built. Fox's favorite is the cucumbers.

Vacation - Part 2

2008-06-04T00:08:00.006-04:00

We also hit some big mall in Nashville. Fox had a good time playing on these cars...we didn't even put quarters in them.

We hit the Gibson store where they make a lot of guitars and banjos, then the Bass Pro Shop...we heard they had some good things for kids to play on. That turned out to be false, but they did have a nice aquarium...

...and a tent he enjoyed checking out.

One of the highlights of the trip was the Nashville Zoo. We hung out with the Pooles and checked out all of the animals. I love going to the Zoo with kids...seeing them be amazed at all of these animals was great.

The Giraffe really put on a show for us. (Fox calls them "Giraffe Long Neck".)

He came right up to where we were and took a bow.

Vacation - Part 1

2008-06-04T00:03:00.010-04:00

We went on vacation two weeks ago to Nashville to visit Bonnie and her family, Eddie and Marla Poole, and Nate and Kelly Turney. We had a blast! Neither of us had spent any actual time in Nashville, I've only passed through it a few times.

Fox was awesome on the plane(s). This was actually his third major trip on a plane, and he got a real kick out of watching the planes take off and land at the airport. Our 1st flight took us to Atlanta for a 2 hour plus layover, but Michelle had 4 shops scheduled, so we ate for free! Fox had Chick-Fil-A, I had Burger King, Michelle had some fancy restaurant's sandwich, and we all shared a Cinnabon.

We eventually made it to Nashville and stayed with Bonnie's parent's there. They took such good care of us, and the food was awesome!

The next day, we went to the Opryland Hotel...they have a huge indoor garden underneath this glass "dome". It's quite impressive.

Monday night, I ended up playing guitar with Eddie, Nate, and Matthew for a Home School Baseball Team banquet. It was great playing with the guys again!

Behind Bonnie's parent's house, there was a digger and a bulldozer clearing some land. We took Fox out to watch, and he was enthralled. He's still talking about the digger. When they finished, we got a few shots of him posing with the equipment.

The sky is falling...

2008-02-22T10:50:00.004-05:00

Before this story, you need some background information. I had recently received a replacement brake booster to replace the faulty one in my car. It looks like the picture above. It's about 10 inches wide, and weighs around 8 pounds...about the size and weight of a child's bowling ball. I had stuck it in the bedroom on top of my chest of drawers to keep it away from Fox, since it's heavy and has random pointy bits on it. Why didn't I just put it in the garage? I don't remember...there must have been a good reason at the time.

Anyway, enough of the back story.

Yesterday, after getting home from work, Fox follows me into the bedroom to help me change clothes. That usually consists of him handing me my tennis shoes, then running around playing hide and seek with me while I change into jeans and a teeshirt. As I'm tying my shoelaces, Michelle comes in and joins us - we are all now sitting on the floor together, playing. I can't remember if Fox is sitting in my lap or just in front of me, but I make the mistake of leaning back against my chest of drawers...I hear some movement, then CRACK!...the brake booster hits me on the top of my head and bounces off onto the floor. As I'm sitting there dazed, I can feel something weird and tingly on my head, almost like it's wet...I reach up to touch it, and sure enough, I'm bleeding. Michelle starts to panic, and she runs to get me a towel. Fox starts to cry because he's scared. I'm still just dazed.

It's bleeding pretty good at this point, and we get Fox calmed down. I assure him that I'm fine, and he starts pointing and saying "boo-boo?". Yup, Daddy made a boo-boo. Luckily, I didn't need stitches, but I have a pretty good lump on my head and a nice headache. Michelle googles "how to tell if you've got a concussion", but I'm OK. No blurred vision or nausea.

I'm just glad it hit me and not Fox. Also, it's good that the round part hit my head, and not any of the pointy bits. That could have caused some real damage.

Lesson learned - don't store auto parts in the bedroom. I told this to my friend Ryan who's fixing up an old VW bus. He laughed because he is also storing auto parts in his bedroom. Why do our wives put up with us?

No Sweat

2008-01-19T17:07:00.000-05:00

Just before Christmas, I noticed that my sneakers were just about worn out, and I needed a new pair. A pair of black Chuck Taylors would be perfect, so I looked up on the internet how much they cost and where I could find some.

I found out a few things I didn't know:

* Chuck Taylors are now owned and manufactured by Nike.

* Nike produces these shoes in China - in sweatshops!

* The three biggest corporate supporters of sweatshop labor in developing countries are Wal-Mart, Nike, and Disney.

I guess I had been naive in thinking that sweatshops were not really a major problem, but in China and India, sweatshops are becoming the norm instead of the exception.

There are some who say that sweatshops are actually good for developing countries - that they provide jobs where there would be none. I'll let you do the research on your own and make your own decision.

I decided to look for an alternative, and I found a few. I ended up purchasing a pair of shoes from No Sweat Apparel. They cost the same price as Chuck Taylors, they look the same, and they were made by a company that pays their employees a living wage and does not violate international labor laws.

It was only a few dollars more for shipping, but I think it was worth it.

¡¡ʎzɐɹɔ

2007-12-18T14:11:00.000-05:00

˙ʇɥƃıɐɹʇs ǝǝs ʇ,uɐɔ ı 'ʎsnq os uǝǝq sɐɥ ǝɟıl ˙ǝɯıʇ ƃuol ɐ uı pǝʇsod ʇ,uǝʌɐɥ ı ʎɹɹos

A Series of Fortunate...Books?

2007-08-07T22:34:00.000-04:00

Along with about a billion other people, I recently finished the last Harry Potter book. Don't worry, I won't spoil anything. It's funny, because I had never intended to read the books, but Michelle had devoured each one of them. She made me take her to see the 1st movie when it came out, then the 2nd and the 3rd, etc. After the 4th movie, I broke down and started reading the books. The rest, as they say, is history.

What struck me recently is how creative a person needs to be to write a book, much less a series. The author (of fantasy or sci-fi books especially) has to have this whole persistent world/universe playing out in their head. I can barely keep track of what I had for breakfast this morning. Thinking about this last night, I've realized that most of my favorite books are not single books, but usually a series of books:

The Lord of the Rings - One of the most popular works in 20th-century literature. I had heard of these books, but never read them until I was 27. I had heard that they were making movies based on the books, and a lot of my friends were excited about this. I decided to read them, and I'm glad I did. I ended up reading the whole series (plus The Hobbit) about five times over the next few years.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Some of the funniest stuff I've ever read. Again, I've gone through this set of books at least four times, and I crack up at the same places every time. There were nights that I was reading in bed, and I would wake Michelle up because I was laughing so hard. Douglas Adams was brilliant.

C.S. Lewis has two sets of books that make my list, the first is The Space Trilogy. Lewis supposedly based Ransom (the main character of The Space Trilogy) on J.R.R. Tolkein, author of the Lord of the Rings. The second book, Perelandra, was my favorite...according to Wikipedia, it "illustrates a new "Garden of Eden", a new "Adam and Eve", and a new "serpent figure" to tempt them. The story illustrates a hypothesis of what could have happened if "our Eve" would have resisted more firmly the temptation of the serpent."

The Chronicles of Narnia - also by Lewis, is an award-winning children's series. I saw the cartoon based on The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe when I was a kid and didn't think anything of it. I saw it again as a teenager and thought, "Wow, that's portraying the Christ story!" Yeah, I'm a slow learner. I finally went back and read the entire series a few years ago, and it was fantastic. I can't believe I missed all of these books as a kid.

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events - I've only read five of the thirteen books in this series (I have to keep borrowing them from the Bennages), but they are really enjoyable little books. They are easy reads filled with witty writing and the sad events surrounding the Baudelaire orphans. It's hard for me to think of these books as "dark" because they are so enjoyable to read.

The Thrawn Trilogy - A Star Wars-based set of novels, this series paved the way for all Star Wars fiction to come. Written ten years before the prequels came out, this is the story George Lucas should have told. If you were frustrated with the prequels, you should read these books to rediscover the Star Wars universe. It details the events that occur a few years after Return of the Jedi. This is another series I've been through multiple times.

The Dark Tower Series - A group of books by Stephen King, this one took a long time to finally wrap up. I haven't actually read the last three books yet, but the rest were quite good. The whole thing is based on the Robert Browning poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came". The first book took King twelve years to write, it will likely take me that long to finish the series.

Fox-zilla

2007-07-30T15:02:00.000-04:00

I've read Darcy and Sandra's posts about how their young ones are learning so much and growing up so fast. I always knew that parents thought their kids grew up too fast, but of course, it never really sunk in until I had my own.

In the span of three days, Fox has learned more than a half dozen new words, signs and tricks. On Sunday, he finally signed "more", then went on to sign "head" (or "hair", I'm not sure what he means yet).

He learned how to stick his tongue out on Monday.

He started saying "mama" on Tuesday, which Michelle is immensely pleased at!

He puts his hat on his head when we give it to him, though he won't let us put his hat on.

He learned how to clap just yesterday.

He sticks his tongue out and pants as his sign for "dog". (He still says "ta" for Tanji, and "da" for dog, but Michelle taught him the sign anyway because it's cute.)

He says "pu" for puff when he wants one. (It's a little finger-food for toddlers.)

This boy LOVES avocado! He calls it "ca", and gets really excited about it!

And, yesterday he visited my office and pulled down every hot wheels car I had sitting on my windowsill. This is the same thing Madeleine used to do when she would visit. On of my co-workers called him "Fox-zilla"...

A few milestones...

2007-06-10T22:44:00.000-04:00

So we were in Orlando this weekend...we left Thursday night and just got back into town tonight (Sunday). While we were there, I witnessed two milestones:

1. I saw my first shuttle launch. STS-117 (Atlantis) launched Friday afternoon, and I saw it from about 25 miles away. Even that far away, it was still pretty cool.

We were at Michelle's sister's house when I heard it was on schedule for launch. A few minutes before it went up, we crawled out of her bedroom window onto her roof and we all sat there looking out over the trees. I had Fox in my lap (don't worry there was no danger - the roof was almost flat) and we saw the shuttle take off and watched it until it was out of site. The smoke and flame that thing puts out is tremendous...we were 25 miles away and it was like someone was launching a model rocket next door.

2. Fox stood up by himself. This afternoon while we were playing at Michelle's parent's house, Fox decided he would be brave and stand up. On Friday, he had tried out his cousin's old walker toy. He wasn't too keen on the whole thing because he was so wobbly. But, he kept playing with it until he had it down pat. I'm sure there was some developmental breakthrough or something, I don't know.

Anyway, this afternoon just before we packed up to leave, he let go...and stood there for about a full second before sitting down. By the time we left, he did it twice more. He's eight months old tomorrow, he's not supposed to be walking this early...he still isn't crawling that well. But, he's always liked standing up, so I guess he's skipping the whole crawling thing.

One other weird thing happened...when we got back home we had a live frog in the toilet and a dead one in the shower. How do these things even get into our bathroom?

Weekend in the backyard...

2007-05-25T12:23:00.001-04:00

This past weekend I spent most of my time in the backyard getting ready for a few "additions".

A few weeks ago I hung this hammock. It's a very nice hand-made hammock from Nicaragua that Mary had given us for our wedding gift...5 years ago. We've been keeping in our closet all these years, but now that we actually go in the backyard with Fox, it was time to hang it up. Just about every afternoon, Fox and I will go out and play in the hammock...he loves it.

Friday night I started work on the fence, I dug four 2 ft. deep holes, dropped posts in them and filled them with concrete. I had forgotten how hard it was to dig in this rock-hard clay!

Saturday, I built the fence and the gate. Some of my best construction work to date, even if I do say so myself!

The fence was needed for this addition:

Tanji, Jeremy and Darcy's dog, is now living with us. Jeremy and Darcy moved to Vero Beach, and they couldn't take the dogs with them, so we took Tanji. She's shedding right now, and Michelle has already started sneezing, but we are keeping her. She's such a sweet dog, and Fox loves her. If you ask him "Where's Tanji?", he'll look at her and make the "T" sound. That's pretty good for a kid who now calls both his Mom and his Dad "Da Da". He also calls EVERYTHING ELSE "Da Da", too. I guess that's his new favorite syllable.

And now to the final addition. Once the fence was done and Tanji was settled in, I raked the 40 billion tons of leaves in the backyard. There's no way I could bag all that in one weekend, so I decided to start a compost pile. It quickly became the largest compost pile I've ever seen...I think I will call it Marjory.

This picture is a little misleading...it's only 3 feet tall and 6 feet wide, but it's almost 8 feet deep!

Fox having a laughing fit.

2007-04-25T17:05:00.000-04:00

He's really hilarious sometimes...when he's happy (which is most of the time), he will laugh at the weirdest things.

He picks one thing every day or so that he finds funny, and you can do that over and over again and he will laugh like this. Then, without warning, that thing is no longer funny, and you have to discover something new.

This time, it was Michelle saying "boo!" that did it...

(This is the best 30 seconds of the "Hello Nonna" video below.)

Hello Nonna Video

2007-04-19T13:22:00.000-04:00

Just a few days later, Michelle taped this for Fox's Nonna.

Hello Granny Video

2007-04-19T12:36:00.000-04:00

Michelle made this video for Fox's Granny. (She also did one for Fox's Nonna, that one's coming up soon).

Once again, this was recorded with our digital camera, so it's grainy and too dark. Until we can get a real video camera, this is the best we can do, sorry!

Alarming!

2007-03-29T16:08:00.000-04:00

Yeah, dumb title...I'm sorry.

I have a hard time getting to work on time in the morning (just ask Jeremy). I found the following cool alarm clocks that might help:

Once the alarm goes off, you have a certain amount of time to put the three wires together in the right order to hit the snooze button. I assume it's a different order each day. If you have to actually think and do some challenging task, you are more apt to stay awake instead of just hitting snooze over and over again. That, combined with the stress of defusing a bomb should do it!

The other cool clock I found was the bacon alarm clock:

From this page. Gets you out of bed with the aroma of sizzling bacon...reminds me of that Office episode where Michael burns his foot on his George Foreman grill he left turned on beside his bed (he was also trying to wake himself up with cooked bacon).

My favorite alarm clock, though? Had to be this morning, when Michelle sat Fox down on the bed beside me to wake me up. He spent 10 minutes grabbing various bits of my face and chewing on them. (Kind of like this.) I've never laughed so hard in my life.

I'm posting this at the end of a long day of report-writing, which I haven't finished yet. The Internet is a good distraction tool, as evidenced by this guy's drawing:

Man, I'm glad I wasn't on THAT bus.

2007-03-26T20:59:00.000-04:00

I snapped this on the way back from Orlando Saturday...

How do I spell relief?

2007-03-21T23:03:00.000-04:00

M E T H Y L P R E D N I S O L O N E

Otherwise known as Prednisone, a corticosteroid. Along with a shot in the butt and an antibiotic for the infection, the good doctor gave me Prednisone for my severe allergic reaction to the Poison Ivy.

(After some research, I do think it was Poison Ivy and not Poison Oak.)

After day 16 of my ordeal, I'm finally starting to get some relief. The infected, swollen elbow looks not-quite-normal but much better than it did. The itching is now limited to my arms and back, not ALL OVER EVERY INCH OF MY BODY like it has been.

I have actually slept through the night and can now wear short sleeves again without grossing out my co-workers.

I started the medication Saturday morning, and at first all I got was the side effects of the drugs (swollen joints, confusion, flushed complexion) without relief from the itching. After about four days, the side effects started to dwindle, and I have just now started feeling better.

So far, this little weed has cost me around $114...
Zanfel $70 (two 1 ounce tubes at $35 an ounce!)
Calagel $6
Dr. Visit co-pay $15
Prescriptions $17 (prednisone and antibiotic)
Loratadine tablets $6

Those little tubes of Zanfel are expensive, but worth it!

When I find a sufficient weed-killer, I will be going on a hunt to eradicate all Poison Ivy from my yard. It won't be pretty.

Welcome to the Itchy and Scratchy Show!

2007-03-17T20:29:00.000-04:00

Warning: This is graphic. Do not read if you get all weird about gross things.

Almost two weeks ago, I rubbed my elbow on a little poison oak vine in my backyard. It was dark, and I was working as hard as I could on my fence. I just didn't notice it.

(The red arrow points to the offending vine.)

No big deal, you say...it gets itchy, you put some cream on it. If only that were so. I've only gotten into Poison Oak once before, and I had a pretty bad reaction to it. I had it all over my forearms for a couple of weeks. I was pretty miserable, but at least it didn't spread.

This recent outbreak, however, is much worse. My elbow looks like a burn victim's. It's blistered, swollen, and infected, too...so that's nice. Both of my arms are covered with rashes and little dots, and I just noticed this morning that it's spread to the backs of my hands and fingers.

My stomach is covered with the rash. It's just plain nasty looking. There's a few spots on my legs as well, but not as bad.

Apparently I'm having what doctors call a "systemic reaction", which means that the urushiol oil from the plant that causes the reaction has now gotten into my bloodstream, and I'm breaking out everywhere.

The $35 tube of Zanfel cream (which does provide a few hours of relief) is almost gone, so I've got to buy more tomorrow. I went to the doctor today, and they gave me a shot in the butt and two prescriptions for a steroid and some antibiotics for the infection. I took 7 pills tonight...hopefully this stuff will kick in soon and I can return to some normalcy.

OK, now for the gross part. I've linked a picture of my arm...do NOT click on this link if you are easily grossed out.

I mean it, it's nasty. You've been warned.
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OK, if you really want to see it, here it is.

Fencing, partying, and playing...

2007-03-15T21:38:00.000-04:00

During a hurricane many moons ago, a few sections of our fence were knocked down. It seems that whoever built this fence used landscaping timbers for fence posts instead of pressure-treated wood! With all the clay around here holding moisture in the ground, it rotted out all of the posts at ground level.

We kept using the phrase "an angry toddler could knock down our fence". True, but I needed help to get it back up. Monday night (March 5th), we had a bunch of folks over to help me raise this fence. We had to excavate the rotted out sections left in the ground, dig new holes, drop in the posts and pour concrete to hold them.

In the process I managed to cut my cable (goodbye TV and Internet!) and get a nasty batch of poison oak on my arms and stomach. The cable was easy to fix, the poison oak rashes - not so much. It's been a week and a half, and I'm still itching like crazy. I finally broke down and let Michelle buy the $35 tube of Zanfel today which seems to work pretty well. We'll see.

After a few more hours working by myself that Friday night, I finally had all of the posts replaced and was ready to nail the fence sections back up.

The nighttime shots you are seeing are from that Friday evening.

The next day, we went to the Johnston boys birthday party where we ran into the Walworths and the Mitchells.

Fox seems to like crowds of people, and he really loved the swingset.

Michelle decided to dress the boy like his father. I keep telling her he's not a dress-up doll...she never listens.

Saturday afternoon we went to Coosh's for the Crawfish Bawl...JB's Zydeco Zoo was playing, and we wanted to boogie with Fox. (He LOVES music with a really strong groove, and JB has that in spades.)

Michelle watches our friend Ethan on Wednesdays...this week he was being so nice to Fox, bringing him his Pooh Bear to play with.

I swear we have the happiest kid on the planet. Thankfully that whole colic thing didn't last too long...

And now I leave you with his "crazy eyes" face...

Fox playing with a burp cloth.

2007-03-01T23:59:00.000-05:00

The space between the notes...

2007-02-19T13:09:00.000-05:00

I was on baby duty last night, so I had the local PBS channel on for background noise. After catching a really interesting documentary on New Orleans, a blues concert came on. Fox LOVES this kind of music, so we sat right in front of the TV while I rocked him. (No, Michelle...I didn't let him watch much.)

Kenny Wayne Shepherd was playing with a bunch of Blues greats...B.B. King, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, the members of Howlin' Wolf's band and the Muddy Waters band, among others. Just for reference, Kenny Wayne Shepherd is a 30 year old hot blues guitarist, and the rest of these guys are between 54 years old ranging all the way up to the 90 year old Pinetop Perkins. Most of them I saw were at least over 70.

While Shepherd was very respectful and was content to play sideman to these legends, you could tell the difference in their playing by the sheer number of notes. Shepherd is kind of a virtuoso guitarist, and he can fill up space really quickly with a flurry of cool licks. These old guys, though...they only played the important notes.

Maybe it's age or arthritis that keeps these guys so laid back in their playing, but they were saying volumes more than Shepherd while using fewer words.

Christopher and I have had this conversation several times...how the spaces in between the notes is almost more important than the notes themselves. Some call it minimalist, some call it simply "sparse". I call it soul. These old guys projected more soul in their sparse playing than Shepherd did the entire concert. Don't get me wrong, I love those flurries of notes, and wish I could do that. While I'll never play on the technical level of a Kenny Wayne Shepherd, I can only hope to one play with a small amount of the soul of these blues legends.

I know it's a cheesy analogy, but Michelle and I deal with life trying to fill up our spaces every day. It's important to remember those spaces, and only play the important notes.

Lots and LOTS of hawks...

2007-01-04T21:51:00.000-05:00

So, I walked out into the back yard to sweep the deck over the weekend, and everything was nice and quiet. All of the sudden I hear this HUGE sound above me...I look up, and about a dozen hawks are leaving one of the trees in the green space behind our house.

I've never seen that many hawks in one place, but as I'm staring into the sky, about ten or twelve more fly out of the same tree...then another batch, then another...by the time they are all in the air there's got to be at least 50 or 60. I was amazed...you could hear the kids in the neighborhood going crazy, because the sky was filled with these huge birds.

I ran into the house to get the camera, but by the time I get back outside and get the camera ready, there was only one within sight. The rest had moved off to the south behind some of the trees.

I think they were having a big Hawk New Years Eve party.

Talking Fox

2006-12-22T23:36:00.000-05:00

You'll have to turn up your speakers to hear it...


10 weeks old, and he loves talking to his animals in his play gym... This was shot with our new digital camera (the old one died), but the video quality is terrible. This new camera takes great still pictures, but lousy video. As always, you can see the newest pictures of Fox here.

Thanksgiving pics

2006-11-29T11:40:00.000-05:00

I've uploaded some pictures of our recent trip to Orlando for Thanksgiving:

Thanksgiving in Orlando

Fox did pretty well at first, but his sleep patterns were ruined. Someone was holding him pretty much the entire time during the day, which made him not sleep at all at night. After a little while, he got pretty cranky, and the drive home was awful. What normally takes four hours took seven. Poor kid. We resolved not to take him on long trips for a little while, at least not driving. When he's in his carseat, he can't stretch out, and he gets really frustrated. For our flight to Arkansas in a few weeks, he won't be confined to his carseat the entire time, plus the flights are much shorter. So, he should do OK. We'll see.

For Family Members Only.

2006-11-16T17:16:00.000-05:00

Other readers can just ignore this post...it's just a video of my son being cute. I made this for family members who don't get to see him much.

This blog will return to it's regularly scheduled programming shortly.

More pics...

2006-11-15T15:43:00.000-05:00

Michelle thinks Fox is Bi-polar. I don't think it's that serious, but he is a bit unpredictable. When he's happy, he's really happy, but when he's not, watch out. He's a bit colicky (what does that word even mean?), and will scream at the top of his lungs for 30 minute intervals several times a day (and night!).

He's still adorable, though. Click on the picture above to see all the pics!

Voting clerks hate stupid people, apparently.

2006-11-09T22:25:00.000-05:00

Election day was Tuesday, as everyone knows. This year, we decided to get absentee ballots, since we didn't know when Fox was coming, and how Michelle would feel on election day. Since he came early, and Michelle was fine by then, we decided to go vote normally. Late Monday night, as I was holding Fox in my arms, I took the absentee ballots and filled them out with the only pen within reach. A red one. We were only going to use these ballots as a voting guide anyway, so I thought that was fine.

Michelle went to vote during the day, and had to go see the clerk at our precinct because we had "ruined" our ballots. They had to be invalidated, then they could give us a new ballot to vote with. Since they were expecting our ballots to be mailed in, they had to call into the home office and jump through a few hoops to get her set up. All of this would fine, but the clerk at our precinct made things very difficult for her. She was an older lady, and not very pleasant...and she kept lecturing Michelle about how she should not have done this, and they've never seen this kind of thing before, etc... She eventually was able to vote (after almost leaving out of frustration at the clerk), and she went home.

She called me and warned me about the clerk and the trouble she had, so when I went after work, I made sure to be extra nice to the woman to try and smooth things over. She was expecting me, though. As soon as I told her who I was, she started in on me. First she lectured me about ruining an official ballot, then she asked me why I didn't just mail the ballot in. I told her we had a three-week old baby, and haven't had a lot of time to devote to picking our candidates and deciding on the issues. She just kept going and going. Finally I said "Ma'am, I'm sorry. We made a mistake, we didn't know this would cause a problem. It won't happen again".

You would think this would appease her, but no. She then asked me why didn't I just read the instructions on the envelope? That would have prevented all of these problems. I told her "I'M SORRY, WE'VE BEEN A LITTLE BUSY WITH A THREE WEEK OLD BABY." I was very firm, but polite. She finally got me a new ballot and I went to the little booth to start marking it.

Here's where it gets fun.

As I'm standing there marking my shiny new ballot, no more than 8 feet away from the clerk at her station, I hear her tell her associate the following: "Having a new baby is no excuse, they should have just read the instructions on the envelope. It just goes to show you how stupid some people can be."

Now, I try to be pretty easy-going, and I don't like to cause a scene. But I don't do well with being called stupid. I had made a simple mistake, that's all. I stood there growing increasingly angry (like Mr. Furious over there --->) and tried to decide what to do. Luckily I realized I was standing in a church, and that yelling and turning over tables probably wouldn't help my witness much.

Michelle had already told me that she was going to call the Supervisor of Elections and complain, so I thought I would just go that route and let him handle it. I made it a point to remember her statement exactly, so that I could have Michelle quote what she said to her boss. I turned in my ballot to a very friendly man, and walked out.

Now, every other poll worker in that precinct was extremely nice and easy to work with. I feel sorry for them that they had to deal with this woman all day long. I came home and had Michelle write down the clerk's exact quote, and she called the Supervisor of Elections (Ion Sancho) the next day. She ended up getting his cell phone number, and she got to speak with him directly. He was very understanding, and the woman will be dealt with directly. He talked to Michelle for almost 45 minutes. I think Michelle was pretty satisfied with her chat with him, so I can only hope that this clerk won't be there next time.

And yes, the ballot in the witch picture is the actual ballot for our precinct.

Pie chart, or Pac chart?

2006-11-02T13:13:00.000-05:00

Happy Halloween!

2006-10-31T22:58:00.000-05:00

Kenya believe it?

2006-10-27T19:02:00.000-04:00

Holy crap. Lions!

He's finally here.

2006-10-18T14:50:00.000-04:00

I had started a really long post a few days ago about the labor and delivery of Fox, but Michelle beat me to the punch with her post.

I'll just say this. I'm sitting on my couch with my laptop doing some work from home. He is sleeping right next to me, and he's making these cute little noises and sneezing every once in a while. I'm still just amazed that I have this adorable little son. He is seriously the cutest thing I've ever seen.

I knew fatherhood was going to be fun, I just wasn't ready for how incredible it really is.

Michelle is wonderful, even though she's tired and frustrated with the whole breastfeeding thing. It's a lot harder than we thought, but it is so worth it.

This band rocks!

2006-10-05T16:37:00.000-04:00

...but it needs a good drummer. Give us a couple of weeks, we'll see what we can do.

Phat Beats Playlist #1

2006-10-01T22:41:00.000-04:00

It's time to discover new music! Here's a rundown of the songs I can't stop listening to at the moment. There's some pretty good stuff here. I've zipped the songs into three different zip files to make the whole list easier to download, just right-click and "Save As" to get them.

1. Invincible - OK Go. These guys got famous on sites like YouTube and Google Video of all places. They are known for making great videos for under $10, like Here It Goes Again and A Million Ways. The video for Invincible is pretty cool, too...if you like seeing stuff blown up. And doesn't everyone? The lyrics to this song just kill me. Apparently, he thinks his ex-girlfriend is an un-stoppable super-powered cyborg (as evidenced by the way she completely destroyed him), and he pleads with her to "use your powers for good". Here's a sample:

"When they finally come to destroy the earth, they'll have to deal with you first...And my money says they won't know about the thousand fahrenheit hot metal lights behind your eyes...you're Invincible."

The campy lyrics, the sparse electric guitar, and the tight feel of the song really add up to a great track. Check out the rest of their album "Oh No" if you get a chance.

2. (I Know) I'm Losing You - Rod Stewart. Yeah, that's right...Rod Stewart. This is some good funky soul right here. The mp3 volume level is a little hot, (I believe it was recorded straight from a 45), but it's worth it. I love it when the drums kick in...

3. JCB - Nizlopi. I think a bunch of you have probably already heard this one as a result of this video. This song became a big hit in the UK. According to the band's Wikipedia article, "The song was written about Luke's troubles with dyslexia at school and his escape to accompany his dad at work." That doesn't quite describe the song and video to me, I think it's brilliant. All the references to 80's pop culture should resonate with guys my age... As a bonus, check out the video for Radiohead's song "Creep" made by the same animator. It's double-plus good.

4. Crazy - Gnarls Barkley. Another #1 from the UK, this song has also made it to #2 on the US charts, so you've probably already heard it. It's just so darn catchy, I can't get it out of my head...

5. Monstertruck 2000 - This Train. A remake of their song "Monstertruck" from a previous album, this tune brings the playlist firmly back into the United States. Specifically the south. It opens with the lyrics "I've got me a doublewide...you can hardly tell it's a trailer from the inside." It's goofy, and I love it.

6. Banjo Boy - Ryan Shupe & The Rubberband. A free release on iTunes, this guy sings about how he'd love to rich and famous, but he plays the banjo, so that will never happen. A cross between Bela Fleck and Eddie Veder? Maybe.

Download zip file of tracks 1 - 6. <---Right-click and "Save As".

7. Don't Push - The Exit. Another free song from iTunes, this one has a really great groove to it about a minute into the song. The chorus to this song gets stuck in my head and I constantly annoy my wife by singing just the 1st line of the chorus over and over again. One word of warning: He does use the word "whore" in the song, but he immediately acknowledges that it wasn't very nice to say that about someone. Rated PG for that one word.

8. Hallelujah - Rufus Wainwright. One of my wife's favorite songs. It really is a beautiful version of Leonard Cohen's original. Lots of people have re-made this one, but I like this version the best.

9. Old McDonald Had a Farm - Rufus Thomas. Another Rufus, this track is as completely different as you can get from #8. The intro is a little grating, but as soon as that phat bass and those horns kick in, I think you'll dig it. Best funk-soul remake of a kid's song I've heard so far.

10. Mahna Mahna - Cake. Speaking of kid-song-remakes, this is by far my favorite. Cake does a spectacular job on this muppet show staple. See the muppet show version here, then listen to Cake's version.

11. Tank! - Yoko Kanno. The theme song from the Cowboy Bebop Anime, Michelle and I used this track as our entrance music at our reception when we got married. It's frenzied and frantic, the same way we felt that day.

12. Here Comes the Fuzz - DJ Format. I can't use most of DJ Format's stuff on a list like this because of the "colorful" language mixed in, but this guy's a genius. When he hooks up with wordsmiths Abdominal or D-cisive, the result is usually quite impressive. Personal favorites include "The Hit Song", "3 Feet Deep", "Vicous Battle Raps", etc... This one's a funky instrumental, so no PG rating required.

Download zip file of tracks 7 - 12. <---Right-click and "Save As".

13. Everybody Gets the Blues - Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band. Last year, I spent a long time rebuilding a complicated automatic transmission, then I broke part of the casing when I went to install it. That afternoon I was still out in the garage working by myslef trying to clean up the mess I had made, and this song came on. Sort of gives you a little perspective, in a light, slightly cheesy way.

14. Mighty Big Car - Fred Eaglesmith. If I had a theme song, this would be it. 'nuff said.

15. Ford Vs. Chevy - Optimus Rhyme. Freely available from their website, this track really grabbed me when I heard it. I love the clean single-line melodies of the electric guitar on top of the beats and bass, with the rap over the top. Very different, and very good.

16. Southern Front Porch Whistler - Terry Taylor (from the Neverhood soundtrack). My favorite track from this album, from one of my favorite video games. We named our band after the main character, Klaymen. (Willie Trombone was a close second choice.)

17. Wizard Needs Food, Badly - Five Iron Frenzy. Everytime I listen to this, it makes me smile. If you're between 20 and 40, and remember the video game Gauntlet, you'll probably get it. Very "Wild at Heart".

Download zip file of tracks 13 - 17. <---Right-click and "Save As".

Note: Several of these songs are out of print, so you couldn't purchase them anywhere even if you wanted to. A few of them were offered as free downloads on iTunes or on the artist's own website. However, if any copyright holders want me to remove your song, just let me know.

Can you be too blessed?

2006-09-25T23:24:00.000-04:00

Have you ever felt like you were too blessed and/or fortunate? Or maybe just felt a little guilty? I'm blogging this from my warm, comfortable bed with my laptop, browsing the Internet over my WiFi, high-speed connection...in my own house with two nice cars (and one rusty pickup) in the driveway. Michelle and I both have good jobs that we love, a large group of wonderful friends, and a terrific family (on both sides). We have a baby on the way that we can't wait to meet, and a church with a purpose we really believe in.

Living in this country, we are some of the most fortunate people in the world. We have freedoms and opportunities that most of us take for granted.

On top of all this, I am reminded of how much we are loved by those around us. We have had four baby showers thrown for us (with one more left to go), and the sheer amount of support shown by our friends and family has literally overwhelmed me. This baby already has more clothes than I do. He has more baby accessories than I even knew existed. I really do sometimes feel guilty for being so blessed by the folks in our lives. Is that wrong, or is that normal?

If you are reading this, you are probably a friend or a family member. I doubt anyone else would be reading this blog. All I can offer is my sincere thanks to you, and my continued amazement of all that God has blessed us with.

Don't take those things for granted.

Tools and freebies!

2006-09-07T23:42:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about doing this for some time...there are tons of great freeware apps and websites out there that you can use to do just about anything. OK, maybe not anything...but a lot.

I've really gotten excited recently about open source and freeware apps, and I've compiled this list of my favorites. Most of these I use frequently, and some are just really handy to keep around for when you'll need them.

Remember, ALL OF THESE ARE FREE!

On-line services/apps:

Let's start with my most-used online app: Gmail. I use this as my main e-mail client (besides my work address), and it has a lot of great features for on-the-go folks. It's fast, has plenty of room for storage, and I can get to it from any machine with Internet access. I'm always telling folks with ISP e-mails to use something like Gmail. When you change ISP's, you lose your e-mail address, but with an independent e-mail app like Gmail you don't have that problem. To become a Gmail power user, try this list of tips. (If you don't have a Gmail account and would like one, just let me know. I've got tons of invites I haven't used yet.) A bonus with Gmail is the built-in chat client where you can chat with other Gmail users. (Or you can install the Gtalk app and do the same thing).

Keeping with Google products, I also use their Calendar for all my scheduling needs. Michelle and I share our calendars with each other and often send each other invites to events, so we can keep track of everything that's going on in our busy lives.

Yet another Google product: Google Spreadsheets. A newer service, this allows me to create spreadsheets online and collaborate with other folks (or simply allow them to view them). I make out a schedule in spreadsheet format for our band at church, and let all the band members have access to view it online. Instead of sending out a "corrected" spreadsheet every week with changes, they can go online and view the most recent version at any time.

I wish Google had a word processor app as well, but they don't (yet). For now, I use Writely to create and collaborate on word processor documents. You'll need to create a free account, but they won't spam you.

Gliffy is a web-based Visio-like diagram maker. It doesn't have a lot of features or symbols yet, but it's good for a quick, simple diagram. (Works similar to Google Spreadsheets and Writely above.)

del.icio.us is great for storing and tagging all of your favorite places on-line. It's so much more than that, though. I used to save every neat website into my browser Favorites, but that got so bloated I couldn't find anything. Now I just chunk everything cool I come across into del.icio.us (via their browser buttons or this Firefox extension) and tag it. Save stuff or find new stuff on their front page. If you've already tried it out, then go here or here to learn about becoming a power user. (My del.icio.us username is 'bluesfella' if you want to see any of my bookmarks.)

Flickr is a great place to host your pictures, or find great shots from around the world. You can also do some pretty neat stuff with them (see bennage.com for an example of Flickr's neat little badge, or go here for some fun tools).

If you need to remotely control your home PC, I haven't found anything better than LogMeIn.com so far. Install a small service on your home PC, then from any web browser you can log into your machine and control it as if you were sitting there. It also handles multiple monitors very well. Some of the extra features (like file transfer) cost money, but the free version is all I need. To get around the file transfer limitation, I log into my PC, bring up Gmail, and mail the file to myself.

You can also use this guide to UltraVNC to setup a free one-click VNC server you can e-mail to a family member that needs you to fix their machine remotely. I would use LogMeIn.com (see above) for a permanent solution, but this seems like a good one-time fix.

Need to send a file to someone that's too big for e-mail? Try either SendThisFile.com or GigaSize.com.

Installable apps:

The number one, most important, "you-need-to-use-this" app is Firefox. More secure and just better all-around than Internet Explorer. If you are still on IE, switch now...you won't regret it. (Current Firefox users need to watch this for amusement.)

I use three different computers regularly (home PC, work PC, and laptop), so I like my Firefox bookmarks to be the same across the board. I use Foxmarks to keep them updated. If I add or delete a bookmark on any of my machines, the changes are duplicated to my other machines within minutes. Combine this with del.icio.us, and you'll never lose a favorite!

Don't have Microsoft Office, but need an Office suite? Try OpenOffice.org. It's a free, downloadable Office suite with a ton of features. I've just now started using it, but I haven't yet found anything I can't do that I could in MS Office. And it's compatible with your current Office documents.

With all of these sites and services that require their own logins, you should use a password manager to keep them safe and secure. You should never use the same username/password at multiple sites, but that can get pretty confusing after a while. Try KeePass, it's an Open Source password safe. You put all of your username/password combos in here, assign one master password, then lock it down.

Speaking of security, if you have sensitive information that you want to keep secure, there is a PGP alternative called TrueCrypt. I haven't used it yet, but all the reviews I've seen so far look good. (And it's free, PGP is not.)

CCleaner is a good program for cleaning your machine of temp files, cookies, and other detritus that collects on your system over time. I wouldn't use their registry cleaner (there are better programs out there for that), but I use the main features pretty often to clean up the dust...

For free virus software, I've used both AVG and AntiVir. I think I like AVG a little better, but it's a toss-up as to which one protects your system best. Do some Google searches and you can find lots of comparisons between the two.

For spyware problems, I use a combination of Windows Defender (which protects in real-time), Ad-Aware, and Spybot Search and Destroy. Be sure to keep the definitions updated on each of these products, and run them regularly. Combined with a better browser (FireFox!) and good virus protection, these apps will help keep you a little safer.

If you are still using Outlook Express for e-mail, you really should try Thunderbird. Just like Firefox vs. IE, Thunderbird has more features and is more secure than Outlook Express. I use it occasionally to check my work e-mail from home.

Have a CD or DVD burner, but don't have/don't like the pay-for-use burning software out there? I use CDBurnerXP Pro. Works great.

Need an FTP client? Try FileZilla.

Foxit is a smaller, faster, and lighter PDF reader. In my experience, it works much faster and better than Acrobat's reader. Less bloated, too!

Need a good media player that will play most types of media without giving you constant codec errors like Windows Media Player does? VLC is the player for you. If you have a video file that won't play in whatever media player you have now, give it a shot.

If you want to do some hard-core photo editing or artwork and you can't afford Photoshop, try GIMPShop or Paint.NET.

Irfanview is a very fast image viewer...also has a few editing features and a batch edit mode that I use to resize large batches of images at once.

I've just started using Picasa to keep track of all the pictures on my hard drive(s). I've got literally tons of them, and this app helps me keep track of them, get rid of duplicates, etc. The tagging feature is nice, too. (And it's from Google!)

For a cool 3D modeling tool, try Blender. I haven't used this one myself yet, but I've heard it's pretty good.

TurboCASH is a free app for managing personal finances. (Jeremy uses GnuCash, but it's not available for Windows users.)

Audacity is a great sound editor, if you like that sort of thing.

I love BitTorrent, and only use Azureus as my download manager. It's got more features than you probably need, but I love it. There are a lot of simpler BitTorrent clients out there (like the standard no-frills BitTorrent downloader) if you don't need the extra features.

Have an iPod?

Yamipod is a freeware app that you can use to bypass iTunes. You can also copy music to and FROM your iPod.

I've been using SharePod to so the same thing, but the developer hasn't been able to keep up with the iPod's newest features. It still works great on my non-video iPod, and it's the app I still use today.

For iPod photos and newer, you can use iPod-directions to download photo maps to your iPod.

You can find lots of cool portable apps for iPods and memory sticks at portableapps.com. Portable versions of OpenOffice, Firefox, Filezilla, etc. Lots of cool stuff that you can run right from your iPod/memory stick. Quite a few of the programs I mentioned in this post are available as a portable app here.

Even more portable apps can be found here and here.

Once you have all of those portable apps on your iPod, you can use the Remora USB launcher to launch all of your apps and favorites. Looks pretty slick.

If this isn't enough for you, you can find much more exhaustive lists of free software here, here, here, and here.

And if you want to get serious about free software, you might want to look at the Free Software Foundation.

Add your comments and let me know the free apps you use most, especially if they aren't on this list. I will try and add more as I come across them.

I was in a band once...

2006-09-07T11:45:00.000-04:00

...and here's proof:

We never cut a CD, but we did have this cassette tape in limited distribution. Very limited, this is the only one in existence.

And, there was that one big concert....

There weren't a lot of people in attendance, sadly...

One day, we'll do a reunion tour.

The Stuntman Chronicles

2006-09-05T09:44:00.000-04:00

So, I was jumping the Grand Canyon in my rocket-car, and the landing was pretty rough and I sprained my ankle.

No, that's a little extreme.

I was rescuing a child from a burning building and twisted my ankle...no, that's a little too "Spider-Man".

OK...I tripped over an old pair of tennis shoes. That's the truth. Not very dramatic, though.

We were on our way out to dinner, and I was walking down the three steps that lead into the garage...I noticed my old tennis shoes that I had left at the bottom of the stairs after cutting the grass today and thought "I should kick those out of the way so that no one trips on them". In the process of kicking them out of the way, of course I tripped over them. Bent my ankle over, heard the "Pop!" and knew I had screwed up big time.

The nurse took one look at it and told me it was fractured, but the x-ray tech and the doctor both said they couldn't find a break, so it's just a "big honkin' sprain" as he described it. They sent me home with a fancy new gel-cast, some Ace bandages and some Motrin.

My poor 8-months-pregnant wife now has to take care of me instead of me taking care of her. Hopefully I'll be off the crutches before she gets too miserable.

Anyway, I'm off to fix my rocket-car...

Always lock the door!

2006-08-14T23:41:00.000-04:00

I attended the Willow Creek Church Leadership Conference this weekend, along with some other leaders from my church. I learned a lot, but I'm still processing some of the information. Some of it had a profound impact on me personally (like the interview with Bono), some of it was merely good.

But one thing I did learn that I can share: When you stay at a hotel, always lock the bathroom door.

I roomed with Jonathan and Matt A. On Friday morning, I was the last to get a shower. As I turned off the water and grabbed my towel, I heard Jonathan yell out that the cleaning lady was in the room. No problem, I had my clothes in the bathroom with me. Not two seconds later, she opens the door and walks right into the bathroom. There I am in all my naked glory, not quite sure what's going on. She freaks out and runs out of the bathroom (leaving the bathroom door open). I closed the door and LOCKED IT, then finished drying off.

Luckily the towel was positioned such that my wife doesn't have to be jealous of the cleaning lady, but it was still a bit embarrassing.

When I finally emerged from the bathroom with clothes on, the cleaning lady apologized profusely. Nevertheless, she kept cleaning...and it's kind of hard to shave with a strange woman who's seen you almost naked trying to stock towels next to you. Jonathan and Matt thought the whole scenario was hilarious, of course.

Later that night, we installed Warcraft III on all of our laptops, and since I just so happened to have a hub and extra network cables, we tried to hook up a mini-LAN party in our room. It didn't work, none of us could see each other's machines. We spent the rest of the evening all playing our own single-player games at the same time. Not exactly multi-player, but I think we got Matt hooked anyway.

What's in a name?

2006-08-07T23:22:00.000-04:00

I'm sure if anyone reads this blog, they've already read my wife's post where she "officially released" our son's name. Fox Carson Rutherford is the name we've chosen, and we've gotten several interesting responses regarding our choice.

What's amusing is that when people ask what name you have planned, they also tend to offer their opinion on that name. Like we are conducting a survey or something. I understand when family or close friends give their opinions; that's pretty much expected. What has surprised me is the opinions you get from acquaintances or total strangers. I guess I just find it odd that people I barely know start trying to offer suggestions on "better" names that what we've already chosen.

In actuality, most everyone who has asked has loved the name Fox. There have been very few people who have made negative comments, but what is really interesting is the comment those detractors have seemed to fall back on: that having a boy named Fox will forever doom him to being beat up every day at school. I just don't see the connection here. How in the world does having a slightly unique name automatically cause a child to get beaten up?

One guy recently said that he would have to get our son some boxing gloves to defend himself. I found that image hilarious. Who do you think is more likely to be picked on, the boy with the cool name that all the girls love, or a kid walking around school wearing boxing gloves?

Ok, that's a bit of a stretch, I know. So, Michelle and I have been conducting our own research. Michelle sees quite a few students every day in her job, and teaches large classes of incoming freshmen. She has asked every kid with a unique name how they felt about their name. I'll let Michelle comment on the actual percentage, but I believe it's almost unanimous that they loved having unique names.

I've also been doing a bit of reading on youth violence. Does naming your child something weird/different cause them to be more susceptible to being picked on? Here's a link to a page of statistics on youth violence from the National Center for Personal Injury and Control.

Scroll down to the section entitled "Risk Factors" and see what they have determined puts kids at risk for being bullied. Read them all...you'll find that a weird name is not on that list.

Maybe it's that Johnny Cash song that has given people the idea that a child's name would cause him so much grief. We aren't considering a girl's name for him. Fox is most definitely a boy's name. We got it out of a Baby Names book under the "Boy" section.

I think the issue may have somewhat of an age bias as well. It seems that folks our age or younger think it's the coolest name they've ever heard. I think times have changed, and the names that our parents picked have become passe' for the current generation. Of course, this happens to every generation...some names go out of style, while new names come in to replace them, or older names become stylish again. I suppose Fox could be considered a new name in this case. (Of course, once he becomes famous and well-respected, expect a whole bunch of families to start naming their sons Fox.)

I mean, check out the cool boy names that a lot of my friends have chosen:
Jackson
Aiden
Cash
Ranen
Clark
Gabriel
Noah
Gavin
Garrett
Grant

These are all interesting names, and a little off the beaten path. I applaud my friends for choosing unique names, and I doubt that any of these kids will get beaten up over it. I mean, would YOU mess with a Gabriel or a Jackson? I think not.

To sleep or not to sleep...

2006-07-31T23:25:00.000-04:00

...that's the question I'm dealing with right now. Spurred on by some tips in this article, I've been attempting to alter my poor sleep habits for about a week now. The gist of the article is that if you wake up at the same time every morning and listen to your body at night, you'll be able to know when you need to go to sleep to get up at that early hour every day. I know, it sounds a little backwards, but there is some truth there.

I have a natural tendency to hit that snooze button over and over again until I'm running late every day. Back when I worked at this job, I ended up getting a warning or two about tardiness. Granted, they were overly strict about every spare minute, but it was still my responsibility to show up on time. I was always on the jagged edge of lateness due to that snooze button.

Once, after hanging out with a Surfer/Pastor/Poet friend of mine from Panama City Beach, I was inspired and attempted to write a little poem. It ended up being a silly little thing about how jarring and evil an alarm clock is. No, I don't remember the words, I only remember that it was a pretty poor excuse for poetry. But it was significant to me in that the only poem I've ever written was about how much I hate alarm clocks.

Getting back to the point, I've been at this endeavor for a week now. My goal was 6:30am, wake up, work out, have breakfast with my wife, and take a shower. I would have even settled for 7:00am if I was really tired.

It worked great on Day One. I was even at work on time.

Day Two - slept in a little, but was up before my normal time. I had forgotten to iron a shirt the night before, however, so I actually ended up being late for work again.

Day Three - back to my old habit.

Day Four was Saturday. I slept in until 9:00am. Not looking good so far.

Day Five was Sunday, and I always get up at 6:30am anyway, because I have to be at church so early. I got up at 6:38am. (That's equivalent to one extra snooze button time period, or as I like to call it, one "Snooze Unit".)

Day Six was today. Unfortunately, I had some pretty bad nightmares last night (which I never have), so I didn't sleep well. I was so tired, I don't even remember getting out of bed this morning. But I did get out of bed...even later than normal.

Day Seven is tomorrow, and I'm blogging this at midnight. This is a lot harder than I thought it would be.

Oh my.

2006-07-31T17:14:00.000-04:00

"Star Wars"...on a Banjo.

Sure, he's no Bela Fleck, but I like it.

Man Repellent and the W.A.F.

2006-07-27T22:09:00.000-04:00

Here are two new phrases that I am submitting for inclusion in our standard vocabulary.

"Man Repellant" is what I use to refer to things (especially T.V. shows) that Michelle is interested in, but would drive any man away. For example, Michelle flipped on the telly while she ate a snack, and stopped on some girly show. I walked in, saw what it was, and immediately declared it "Man Repellent". Instead of lingering, I went into my cave and watched the opening chase scene in The Transporter. That's a pretty good antidote, in my opinion.

Feel free to use this phrase at your discretion.

The other phrase, which I did not coin, but ran across today, is "W.A.F.", or "Wife Acceptance Factor". Also known as "Wife Approval Factor", it is the rating you can give to the chance that your wife will accept the lasest geeky hobby/tech gadget/computer purchase, etc..

These endeavors can either have a high or low Wife Acceptance Factor. For example, Jeremy came into my office today, and we were discussing various geeky projects, including his Centipede arcade machine running on MAME. He pondered aloud whether Darcy would let him move his arcade cabinet into Madeleine's room. I stated that this prospect had a very low W.A.F. However, he went on to describe how he would like to take the control interface and adapt it to control a mouse, so that Madeleine could play educational games on the box. This idea should now have a high W.A.F.

Some other examples:

Bringing home flowers. -- High W.A.F.

Tracking dirt/grease into the house after working in the garage all day. -- Low W.A.F.

Bringing home another outdated PC to turn into a new webcam server, etc.. -- Low W.A.F.

Bringing home another project vehicle. -- Rock-bottom W.A.F. (probably resulting in me sleeping in the garage for good.)

Ouch.

2006-07-25T16:07:00.000-04:00

During our men's group Sunday night, we briefly ran across the subject of being a Christian in the workplace. It reminded me of an eye-opening event. But first, let's set the stage.

--/begin setting stage:

A few jobs ago, I worked at this large company (900+ employees in a large cube farm) where I got promoted to work on a QC team. Basically, I was decent enough at what I did and technically-savvy, so I got to be a member of this five-person Quality Control group. We grabbed "grunt work" submitted by all of the other 60 or so employees in my department, and checked them for accuracy, compliance with regulations, etc.

It was pretty mind-numbing after a while, but better than doing the grunt work I had graduated from.

(Imagine the above picture as half of my department. Now imagine that there are eight to ten more departments of that size. Now cram all of that into one large, open building with no windows. Cubes as far as the eye can see. Have I scared you yet?)

--/end setting stage.

Anyway, there were two other Christians in my group that stood out. I'll call the first one "Laverne", because she reminds me a LOT of Nurse Laverne on Scrubs. She always spouted Christianese phrases and had a bit of the "holier-than-thou" air about her. But, she was sweet and we got along well. Her main problem was her work ethic - it stunk. Always late, put out very poor-quality work, etc..

The second, I'll refer to as "Pam". As in Pam from The Office. I also had a Jim-like crush on her, but like Pam, she had a fiance. That she eventually married. So, no Season-Two-Finale-Kiss going on there.

Anyway, she was very pretty, and had a great personality. The only odd thing about her? She belonged to this denomination that was very strict about hair, makeup, dress, etc. Most everyone in the department really liked her, but thought she must be weird because of the almost-cultish "rules" she had to follow.

I kept these summations of my fellow Christians to myself, but always felt that I should try and balance out the equation by trying to be a stable, reliable, and above all NORMAL Christian. Yeah, that worked out well.

One afternoon, "Pam" pulled me aside and told me that someone had asked her why, if I was a Christian, did I loudly bad-mouth other people's work when doing QC? You see, those of us in the QC group tended to mouth off to each other to let off steam, and that usually included making fun of the obvious mistakes other people made that we had found during the day.

I had also forgotten the fact that, in a cube farm, EVERYTHING said out loud can not only be heard by 20 other people, but spreads quickly.

Needless to say, I was shaken up by "Pam's" statement. Here I was, trying to be that good Christian and be an example to the non-Christians around me, and I didn't even notice that I was just as jaded and flawed as everyone else. What a world view, right?

I can only hope that the experience has served to illicit some change in my behavior. It's definitely made me more aware of how criticizing others often only serves to damage our reputation as Christians. I still tend to be a bit snarky, but I try to do so in a way that doesn't put others down. At least, that's my goal.

"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
Matthew 7:1-5

Dark Side of the Rainbow.

2006-07-17T13:47:00.000-04:00

Heard about the Dark Side of the Rainbow? You can watch it here.

And out of the blue...Ninjas attack.

2006-07-11T13:24:00.000-04:00

I have NO IDEA what comic book this is from, but it's great.

Click to zoom in:

Monkeys in Barrels.

2006-07-07T09:49:00.000-04:00

From this article explaining the posible origins of the phrase "More fun than a barrel of monkeys":

Word historian Charles E. Funk wrote: "One monkey arouses a great deal of amusement. Two or more then double the...amusement. If one were to release a barrelful...of monkeys, we must suppose that their antics would become hilariously comical."

Indeed.

I think I might change my last name to "Funk" like that guy. Then after I get my doctorate, I could be "Dr. Funk". Even just plain old "Mr. Funk" would be fine.

My cute pregnant wife and I.

2006-07-06T12:48:00.000-04:00

My Mom was visiting this past weekend and gave me some pictures she had taken. This is one of them...

Cinnamon sugar swirls in every bite!

2006-06-28T22:54:00.000-04:00

My love for Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cereal began in 1984, the year it first came out. I was ten years old. I remember that my Mom bought us two boxes of it (we ate cereal just about every morning) so that it would last us through the week. What she didn't count on was the power of that sugary goodness to control her oldest son's mind.

I woke up the next morning, and poured my first bowl...it was SO GOOD that I quickly finished it. So I poured another. I couldn't stop, it was that good...another bowl gone...with the next bowl I had to add more milk...I'm starting to eat faster and faster...then before I knew it, the box was empty. So I went to the pantry and got the other box. And I ate that entire box as well. Two boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cereal...swirling around in the digestive system of a ten-year old boy. Not only was I a little bit sick from all the sugar, but I found a new source of power that day.

I imagine the sugar rush and the ensuing crash was pretty severe, but my feeble brain can't really recall. All I know is that it was good, and I had to have more. I tried the cereal again recently, and it was everything I remember, but I just can't handle my cereal like I used to.

There's got to be some way of harnessing all the energy of a ten year old hopped-up on sugar. I bet I could run my house for a week on two boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cereal.

First Monkeys, now Bugs?

2006-06-27T22:56:00.000-04:00

Yes, I've re-started my restoration work on Steve Bennage's VW Bug. I put a page (in Blogger format) on my main site, you can check it out here.

My Monkey Marketing Theory

2006-06-19T17:07:00.000-04:00

I have a theory, and it is very simple. Monkeys make any commercial funnier. It's true, you can't deny it. Take this commercial, or this one, or even this one. And these are just the TrunkMonkey ones!

(OK, here's another).

Even VISA, CareerBuilder.com (2, 3, 4, and 5!), Vodaphone, and Bud Light know what's going on.

Higher Monkey Quotient = Higher Funny Quotient.

You know it to be true.

Vegas Elvis at the Funeral

2006-06-15T23:54:00.000-04:00

My great-grandmother passed away last week. She was just shy of her 93rd birthday. There was joy in her passing, in that she was ready and anxious to go home, but there is of course mourning as well.

Michelle and I drove into Panama City last Monday afternoon to attend the funeral, we made it just in time, and sat with my parents on the second row. I hate to use the phrase, but it was almost a "typical" funeral, reflecting on the wisdom and kindness of a saint who has lived a full life. Until we got to the third song, then it became...in a word..."AWESOME".

Let me back-track...the pastor who was speaking (officiating?...what do you call it?) at the funeral was good, if not a bit boring. He read the normal Bible quotes, used the normal anecdotes, and we listened to three songs interspersed through his message. The first two were pretty fitting for a funeral. Both were country songs (Michelle can tell you what they were) that spoke about homecoming, etc... The third....was VEGAS ELVIS.

Yep, you heard me. She loved Elvis, so someone made the decision to include a song she would have enjoyed. The best part was the song choice...live Elvis from the Vegas years. For the first minute and a half, it was a pretty satisfying rendition of "How Great Thou Art", then the King kicked it up about six notches.

Here's the link, give it a listen. Close your eyes and imagine yourself in a stuffy little funeral home surrounded by solemn relatives...then wait until the 1:50 mark and hold on tight. It was all I could do not to giggle...I had to bite my lip to suppress the laughter.

The first thing Michelle and I talked about when we were out of earshot was that song and how great it was (wert?). We both thought it hilarious...my Mom did, too. The best bit? I bet my Great-Grandmother would have loved it, too.

Snow Speeder

2006-04-07T00:30:00.000-04:00

I guess I've always been a StarWars fan. I remember loving the movies when I was a kid, and I did attend all of the opening nights for the new ones. Not dressed up, or anything. I'm a geek, but I have my pride.

Anyway, I do remember getting a Rebel Snow Speeder toy in the early 80's. (Here's a link to a description of it.) If you added batteries, you could make the "laser cannons" light up and make really cool noises. I think both my brother and I each got one, and I remember turning the lights off in our bedroom and opening the door to the bathroom. We would fly these things around the room, and watch the battles reflected back to us from the bathroom mirror.

I don't remember us having too many electronic toys, but I think that's a good thing. Kids drive their parents crazy with noise-making, flashing, obnoxious toys these days. Most of our toys required imagination to provide the effects.

G.I. Joes, Transformers, and LEGOS. That was the trifecta of cool toys for me and my brother. (I know, they're supposed to be called "LEGO bricks or toys", but I only knew them as "LEGOS".) I couldn't wait for a Saturday where I could spend all day setting up my vast collection of G.I. Joes into a huge, bedroom-encompasing battle to end all battles. I would position every figure carefully (with their correct weapons) and spend all day getting everything just right. Often, I wouldn't even HAVE the battle, it was the setting up that was the most fun.

Sometimes it was spending hours building a fortress out of LEGOS, complete with trap doors, gun emplacements, helicopter pads (with matching helicopters), and even a brig for captured enemies. Or just sitting around transforming all my favorite Transformers, and making "that sound" with your mouth. (You know, the transformer sound you learned from watching the cartoon.) You couldn't transform them WITHOUT making the sound!

Anyway, for our children, I'm planning on steering away from the electronic toys for the most part. Not that some of them aren't great, but I don't want to give them too many toys that replace imagination with batteries and buttons.

What could happen?

2005-07-13T14:15:00.000-04:00

I started my new job last Thursday. It's quite a step up from where I was before, and my new boss is one of my good friends, so I jumped at the chance to work here. The goal for my first day was to simply learn all I could about my new responsibilities, and meet all my new co-workers, etc.

It's a smallish company, and the IT staff consists of two people. Jeremy is the manager, and Chris is the only other employee. He's the guy I'll be replacing.

Chris still had two days left when I started, so it would give me a good chance to learn all I could from him while he was still here.

Thee things happened to me on this first day that I will mention.

(1.) After grilling Jeremy about the job, I knew that most of the folks in the office were gone by 5:00pm. So, on the morning of first day, I showed up at 5 minutes to 8.

There was no one there. Well, at least it looked that way. The front double-doors were closed, and I assumed locked. Just to be sure, I walked up and gently tried to turn the handle. Yep, locked. As I turned around to walk back outside, I heard the beeping start. As it got louder, I realized that I had just set off the alarm.

Nuts.

Here I am, wondering around the hallway on my first day having just set off the alarm. As I stood there trying to decide whether to run out to my car or wait around for the first employee to show up, my decision was made for me. Around the corner came the President of the company. He greeted me, then as we got close to the door, said "did you jiggle the doorknob or something?". I admitted that I did, but it didn't seem to bother him. He walked up to the doors, pulls out his pocket knife, and jams it into the space between the doors. He manages to pop it open, then shuts off the alarm. Didn't even think about using a key.

He turned on the TV in the conference room to check the news (this was the day of the London bombings) and told me I could just hang out there until Jeremy or Chris arrived. 45 minutes later, they show up.

(2.) So we get on with the business of teaching me everything Chris knows. As we are in the server room about an hour later, Chris shows me the back wall where the Internet connection, phone systems, and Cisco routers are in one big rack. They are all powered by one big Power Supply that they had been having some trouble with. There's a big plug in the front, and Jeremy walks into the server room, looks at the plug, and pulls it out to look at it. That kills the battery backup, but he says "It's OK as long as we don't lose power".

Yeah, famous last words.

He plugs it back in, but it doesn't come back on. No worries, he'll take a look at it after he gets back from the CEO's house. (He had to go fix his e-mail or something.)

I'll bet you can guess what happens next. While Jeremy is out of the office, Chris and I are going over some of his job functions. The lights flicker, things start beeping, and lots of people start talking. Someone comes over and tells Chris the phones are down, and the look on his face is priceless. We take off running to the server room, and sure enough, the brown-out took down all of the routers and the phone system. The UPS is still dead, so we hastily plug everything into a non-UPS wall outlet just to get work going again. As long as the power doesn't go out again, it should work as a temporary fix...

Jeremy eventually comes back, and we pull apart the UPS to find that in unplugging it the first time, Jeremy had actually broken one of the connectors. When we leave the room, I have to step around the broken UPS, and (3.) end up tearing my pants against one of the breaker boxes.

All in all, it was a fun day.

Losers Weepers...

2005-05-25T08:31:00.000-04:00

When I was in kindergarten (Highland Park Elementary), Mrs. James was my teacher. It's funny, I can't remember any of my teacher's names all through school (including most of college), but I remember my kindergarten teacher. I only remember getting in trouble once that year, and Mrs. James had to smack my hand with a ruler. Can't remember what I did...

Anyway, at one point during the year, there was something school-related that my Mom had to pay for, and she gave me the money to do it. I had never even held a $20 bill before, much less been trusted with taking one to school. It was like a little paper treasure, and I had to keep it safe until the time came to turn it in. My parents were counting on me...

Needless to say, I lost it. When the time came to cough up the dough, it was nowhere to be found. I was terrified. I had been entrusted with something so big, and had failed. Not only that, but I knew my parents were going to be upset. We didn't have much, and losing $20 was a big deal. I just knew that severe consequences were in my future. I dreaded having to tell my Mom that I had lost the money, but I did. She was upset, but not angry. I still felt terrible...I'm pretty sure tears were involved.

Some time later, could have been a week or even several months, I found the money. I had a seldom-used blue plastic pencil pouch that had a few crayons and pencils in it. I think it had a picture of Mickey Mouse on it. On the outside was a smaller little pouch you were supposed to put change in. It had a little button to keep it closed. I hardly used this pouch, and I NEVER used the change holder, so imagine my surprise when I opened it and found that neatly-folded $20 bill! I guess I put it there for safe keeping, then promptly forgot about it.

I showed it to my Mom, and she was of course relieved. I guess I felt justified that I had finally found the money, but I certainly set a precedent for later in life...I still put things away for "safe keeping" and promptly forget where they are.

Such is life, I guess.

New: Tastier Beef!

2005-05-11T16:39:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I got a frozen "Healthy Choice" meal out of the freezer, and noticed the blurb on the front. "New: Tastier Beef!".

Right. So, if this is real beef (I have my doubts), what exactly are they doing to it to make it even more tastier?

Don't answer that.

Snapshot

2005-05-03T20:59:00.000-04:00

Here's me as a young'un...the car behind me is my Dad's '57 Chevy race car. I spent most of the week crawling around in grease and oil at the garage, then the weekends at the racetrack. Where do you think I got my love of old cars?

Reportedly, the first big phrase I ever said was "automatic transmission".

What's in a name...

2005-05-03T16:30:00.000-04:00

Why "Sarcastic Picnic"?

When I was registering the site with Blogger, every name I entered was already in use. I guess I'm not as unique and original as I thought. After countless tries at witty titles were frustrated, I finally just went to the Merriam Webster website and watched their little "Real Time Word" display until I saw two consecutive words that I could turn into a title for this blog. "Sarcastic" and "Picnic" was the first combination I saw.

You see, magic CAN happen with randomness...

Fishing...

2005-05-03T14:59:00.000-04:00

My family moved to a different part of town when I was almost ten. The new place was on a quiet street, just two blocks from a little lake, with a spillway where the road ran across.

My brother and I thought that would be a great fishing spot, so we trudged down there with our little rods and reels and spent many afternoons during the summer trying for a bite. Worms, bread, lures, we tried it all. Nothing worked. I don't think we ever even got a nibble, but we tried.

After a while, we decided that our problem must be that we didn't have a boat. There obviously wasn't any fish near the shore, so we needed a boat to go where the fish are. Keep in mind I was somewhere between ten and twelve, and didn't even have the normal amount of common sense most kids are endowed with.

We found a four foot by four foot piece of plywood, and some two by fours. I borrowed a hammer and some nails from my Dad (can't remember if he even knew what we were doing), and proceeded to make my version of a boat. I laid the plywood on the ground, and attached the two by fours as "rails" around the sides.

It didn't look like it would hold water, what with the large gaps at the corners and in between the sides and the bottom of the boat, so I did what any logical young boy would do - I covered the bottom with trash bags. I didn't have access to any caulk, so why not? I slit some black lawn garbage bags and cut them to fit the bottom of the boat, with enough overlapping the sides to be safe. The problem was, I didn't have any one piece of black trash bag big enough, so I had to tape a few pieces together. With that clear tape you use to wrap presents with at Christmas. No duct tape here, no sir. Only the best for our little boat.

My brother and I loaded it up onto our wagon (we called it our "boat trailer"), and managed to wrestle it down to the lowest point of the bank we could find. It didn't get halfway into the water before we knew that the jig was indeed up. We looked at each other with that "I'm not getting into THAT thing" expression, and hauled it back to the house to be dismantled and used in our tree house (another marvel of modern engineering I'll get to later).

Maybe next time.

A Repository of Memories...

2005-05-03T14:09:00.000-04:00

..a place to record those things which I am prone to forget.

A conversation I had with my friend Spencer a few weeks ago made me realize that I have forgotten so much of my past, so here is where I'll try and keep those things alive.