So It Has Been Five Days...So What?

Yeah, yeah, I know...it has been a while since my last update. Well, I have not really been motivated so the words are not flowing. However, this weekend was pretty event-filled so I thought I would blog a bit.

The work week ended rather slow after working my customary two days from home (Wed and Thu). Friday was quiet and I went home early. I snagged a geocache on the way home Friday and hoped to do some serious caching on Saturday. However, I failed to remember that my weekend was full and I had things to do...

Saturday morning I got up and went to the Men's breakfast and ate a pretty good meal as well as good conversation with my BiC's. After we ate and cleaned up, I walked out to see how the church yard sale was doing. Things were going well and a lot of the bigger items had been sold. I then was told that a couple of draw items (a cell phone and a digital camera) had been stolen right off the table. Now maybe I am just a cynic, but how low does a person have to be to steal from a CHURCH? And a church yard sale at that? After voicing my ire, I went home.

When I got home my lovely wife was not there so I let the dogs out to "do their thing" while I contemplated going geocaching at Breckenridge Park in Richardson. It is a big park and there were 15 caches there I have not found yet. It sounded perfect. I collected my gear and headed out. Yes I had a house to vacuum and two yards to mow, but I was feeling selfish so I went anyways. That boys and girls is where I made my big mistake.

I finally made it to the park (a wrong turn and several bicyclists hindered me from making the correct turn) and started my trek. I headed off but in the end I had the single most disappointing day ever. I only found one in the park and two outside the park that I had missed a few weeks ago. I guess that when you are being led to do the right thing and you get selfish and do the wrong thing, you pay. So El Gee was not "the great white geocache hunter" he wanted to be on Saturday...and I deserved what I got.

Deflated, I came home and mowed the grass and then walked Little Man (who by the way is looking really old and most of the time acts very old) a bit. He did not seem to want to walk, but he did and then we went back home. With all the hard sweaty work done, I got a shower.

Sunday I skipped Sunday School but made it to church. Sometimes it is more important to take care of personal things at home while you have the time then waiting and letting them simmer and possibly boil over.

After church my wife and I went to "Joe's Italian Bistro", a mom and pop type place, for lunch. The chicken marsala was great, but I ended up spilling some of the sauce on my jeans. It most likely will come out thanks to a blast of "Spray and Wash" I put on them when I got home. After lunch my wife laid down and I went out to place a new cache close by and replace one that had been muggled. Both were put in action and ready to be found.

After that I did not have much time before my wife and I needed to go to the parsonage and participate in some "Alter Worker" training. My wife and I (as well as 6 other couples) were chosen to be available to pray for people when they request it. While our new pastor is not the most accomplished teacher in the world, he is a strong man of God and is growing into his new role very well. We are quite proud of him.

We finally left at 9 PM and headed home to walk the dogs. It was not much later that I fell asleep while my wife was surfing the web.

Huh?

Now I am not a fan of anyone mentioned in this clip, but for all that is Holy, WHY spout off about things like this?





This guy is just one of the many reasons people have so little interest in the Christian faith. This man preaches hate, pure and simple. Christ is love.

Every Log Tells A Story

I periodically scan the visitor tracking logs of this blog, just to get an idea of who visits this site and what brings them here. My hits are relatively low, 10 or so a day. On Monday, I was blown away...the logs showed 42 hits, the majority coming from European Credit Management in the UK. It seems the search started with info regarding the mattress that my wife and I bought from I Ikea last year, the Sultan Evje. While the number of hits is surprising, the context of the search is not (a large number of people hit my blog looking for info on that mattress). What is surprising is that after searching my blog for mattress info, they took the time to read several months of archieved articles. Interesting.

Scanning the logs I also notice a few hits on the con man and convicted fraudster, Ronald Patrick Arlt, whom I met a few years ago. It seems that I get hits on his name every week. Some are from former victims who have contacted me to share information, others are not. I have even had law firms seach for his name and be brought to my site.

And there are a large number of searches for the avatar that I use on this blog, Tux (the Linux penguin) swatting the Microsoft butterfy. That item seems to be pretty popular. Actually that search is as popular as the one on how to get soap suds out of your dishwasher (a cute story that I blogged about last year or so).

And lastly (but nost important in my opinion) are the regular readers (mostly friends) who stop by (sometimes every day) to see what good ol' El Gee is up to.

Yep, every log tells a story.

Cache and DREAM

Whoo hoo I had a grand time on Saturday afternoon. My morning was not bad but the afternoon was better.

I had gotten a call Friday evening from the men's ministry leader asking if I would help serve during the womens "mother/daughter" breakfast. I was glad to help and it gave me a chance to chat with a couple of the guys I normally do not talk to much. After the serving was over, I volunteered to wash dishes and clean up before going home. The ladies had a good time and they were pleased with our work. That was a good feeling.

After my wife and I got home, I decided to grab a few caches with the new GPSr. I initially had trouble getting used to it but after a while it became easier. While I missed a few, I still came home with 20 smilies (smilies are the graphical symbol on the geocaching web page that you get when you find a cache) in about a 5 hour period. I did a lot of walking and got most of the 20 cache "Star Wars" series, plus a few that I had missed in the past.

Once I got home I cleaned up the old GPSr I was borrowing from a guy at church and then started collecting things for the chuch yard sale. I was able to get rid of a few things I will most likely never use. It helps cure me of my pack rat syndrome!

I got up this morning and was pleasantly surprised when my wife was ready for Sunday school when I was, so this time she was actully going to go to SS as well as church service. That was pretty good as well. After church we dropped off the items for the yard sale and then my wife and I went to the Rockfish Grill for lunch. I had the etoufee (whch was okay, but not spectacular) and my wife had the macadamia nut crusted Mahi Mahi with wild rice and creamed corn (she picked the sides...it normally comes with skillet potatoes). She gave me a taste and I had to admit it was pretty good.

We got home and she said she was going to walk The Golden at the nature preserve in Plano so I decided to grab a few caches in the area. I only got four today, but two of them were pretty hard and another was in very secluded area that the police watch. It is the site of an old strip mall that has basically overgrown with weeds and it has been stripped of much of the recyclable material. The brush is so thick it hides the mall from the road and the access to it is not direct so getting in and out is a big weird.

After I got back and called my mom to wish her a happy Mother's Day, I walked the dogss then started watching some of the matches at the DREAM MMA event last night in Japan. I only watched three of the fights because I recognized the fighters. I could have watched another that I recognized but I am not a big fan of Caol Uno so I skipped it. Instead I watched Eddie Alvarez, Nick Diaz, and Jason "Mayhem" Miller take on opponents. My thoughts:

Eddie Alvarez def. Joachim Hansen - I watched Eddie when he used to fight on Bodog. He is a great striker and while he peppered Hansen with punches and kicks, the fight went to decision because he never could take control once he had Hansen on the ground. It was a good fight nonetheless.

Nick Diaz def. Katsuya Inou - I have only seen a few fights where someone actually threw in the towel...this was one of them. Diaz is a tough guy from Compton. He is a Cesar Gracie BJJ practitioner and is a purple belt if memory serves me correctly (a Gracie purple is equal to almost anyone elses black belt). To top that off, he is a skilled (if not unorthodox) boxer. While he can finish you on the ground, he would rather stand and bang all the while taunting you. That is exactly what he did with Katsuya. Katsuya decided to stand and trade punches with Nick instead of getting him down and trying some ground work. BIG MISTAKE. Nick does not back down. Katsuya was basically a target for Nick to pound on for 10 minutes.

Jason Miller def. Katsuyori Shibata - This was my favorite fight of the night. If you have never seen Jason "Mayhem" Miller in action, go to mmalinker dot com and watch a few. Darn he is entertaining, win or lose. His antics in the ring had me laughing the entire fight. Shibata was completely out of his league with Miller. Miller picked him apart and made the audience laugh as he punched, kicked, and kneed his victim into a bloody pulp. After the video was over I looked up "Katsuyori Shibata" on the web. While I am not sure, I think it means "punching bag" in Japanese. Just kidding, folks.

If this card does not change, then July looks like it will be a hot month. Affliction has managed to sign Fedor and Tim Slyvia for a heavyweight bout. I think this may be Fedor's toughest contest in years. He has had it easy for a while. Of course TUF 7 is looking pretty good with Evan Tanner, Diego Sanchez, and Jeremy Stephens on the card. However I am very excited about UFC 85, with a PACKED card including Matt Hughes vs. Thiago Alves, Marcus Davis vs. Mike Swick (I am really looking forward to that one...I like both fighters a lot), Fabricio Werdum vs. Brandon Vera, Jorge Rivera vs. Martin Kampmann, Antoni Hardonk vs. Neil Wain, Paul Taylor vs. Jess Liaudin...actually the whole card is good, those are just my favorites.

Well, I need my beauty sleep...if you know what I look like you would agree!

Toy Update

I checked USPS online to see what the status of my delivery was on the GPSr that I ordered and it showed that it made it to the main DC in Coppell, TX this morning. This encouraged me, but since the USPS is notoriously slow, I figured I would not get it until Monday.

SURPRISE!

My wife just called to tell me that it had just been delivered. I guess overall that is not bad. I ordered it Monday night, it was shipped from Georgia on Tuesday evening and arrived at my home on Friday morning. Not bad for the USPS. Maybe all those gifts that we have given our mail carrier over the years has actually paid off :-) .

I now can go home and hopefully start playing with my new toy this evening. There is a night cache nearby I have not gotten yet...

Friday Is Here

Wow, it is Friday already! The week has gone by quickly, even Wednesday and Thursday which are my work at home days.

I cut our yard and our neighbors last night and was able to get done with both AND walk Little Man before it got dark. God is good!

After a relaxing hot shower, I had the hankering for some ice cream so I drove over to Kroger and got a pint of Blue Bell Dutch Chocolate. My wife was clear...do not by her any. With a short grocery list in my hand and my wallet in my pocket, I headed off.

I came back and watched Law and Order that had been taped the night before and hoped to watch Lost but I screwed up and missed it, so it looks like I will have to find a copy online to watch. I hate when they change the times that shows come on. It screws up my recording!

Earlier in the day I collected a few goodies to drop off at the church yard/garage sale and noticed I had an old laptop that belonged to work in my junk pile (when I say old, I mean OLD. 600 mhz, 256 meg RAM old) so I wiped the HD and set it aside to take back to work. Now that my wife has a laptop, we do not need to borrow one from work any more. Work, at one time had a rather large collection of old laptops and my boss did not mind if I borrowed on to travel with. The selection is rather slim now but that is okay as most people have laptops.

Work, so far, has been light. Monday was a bit busy but the past three days have been very quiet. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not. I would rather have work to do in the day and have the nights be quiet than lots of quiet all the time then things hitting all at once. Feast or famine is the law of the land.

Well, I learned yet another lesson. When given the option to pay a little more for priority shipping, do it. I ordered my GPSr on the evening of the 5th and I still have not gotten confirmation from the USPS that it has been picked up from the warehouse. Oh well, lesson learned. I wonder how long it will take to get here? Will I have it by next weekend (17th) or will I wait even longer? I guess we will find out!

Will It Get Better?

Michelle Malkin is reporting that the Myanmar disaster is getting worse. No, not by the body count (which is rising daily) but by the fact that the Burmese government has confiscated food sent by the World Food Program.


Reuters reports:

The two shipments, 38 tonnes of high-energy biscuits, were enough to feed 95,000 people — a tiny fraction of the estimated 1.5 million destitute survivors of Cyclone Nargis, which ripped into the southeast Asian nation six days ago.

“It should be on trucks headed to the victims. You’ve seen the conditions they are in. That food is now sitting on a tarmac doing no good,” Banbury said.

Despite the desperate needs of the survivors, the generals are adamant that only they will distribute the emergency aid that is going in after the worst cyclone to hit Asia since 1991, when 143,000 people were killed in Bangladesh.

Sigh.

Myanmar Tragedy

The death toll is officially 22,000 but people are expecting it to climb to 100,000.

The US military is still not allowed in to help. Quoting Financial Times dot com,

“Only three people in the whole country can make decisions, one of whom is the senior general’s astrologer,” one foreign aid worker said."

That is sad. How much you want to bet that America's enemies will spin this in their favor.

Why is the military not allowed to help?

“The Burmese military is concerned about white faces...seeing what they’re doing,” said Aung Naing Oo, a Burmese political analyst exiled to Thailand."

and

"The (Burmese) regime had given clearance for a small four-member team of UN workers from Asian countries to enter Burma to assess the situation. But a fifth UN worker from a western country was denied permission to enter the country."

Well, darn, I have have to give them credit for sticking by their guns. usually when someone does not trust the US, they will let us in the minute things get ugly. Burma is keeping us out throughout the worst disaster in recent memory.

I do pray for all those who are suffering in Myanmar. May God give you peace.

Economic Stimulus

Whether you think it is a good idea or not, the federal government is giving a rebate to most US taxpayers this year. The rebate is $600 per taxpaying adult, $1200 for couples, and $300 per dependent. For us, it equates to $1200 since Soldier Boy is dependent no longer on us.

Everyone has a idea on whether this will help spur the economy. Regardless of you opinion, you have at least $600 to do with as you wish. The feds are hoping you will spend it and some of us will. I personally am using in four specific areas:

* Pay off one of the two credit cards we owe money on.
* Pay of my wife's new (used) Gateway laptop that was sold to us by a member of our church (at a very good price).
* Get me a GPSr unit so I can return the one I am borrowing from yet another member of our church (who has let me borrow this one indefinitely since he has two).
* Plop the remainder into the bank.

Since we owe more than the total of the two credit cards, we will continue to drop $500 a month on the other one until it is paid off. We normally are not debt people but a few things came up over the past four years that caused us to borrow the money. The first was some home repairs, then we had not one, but two knee replacement surgeries for The Golden. Let me tell you something, if you go to a good vet hospital, it ain't cheap.

The stimulus packaged comes at a good time. I have been holding off on buying the GPSr for 4-5 months because I wanted to get a good one and did not have the cash to get it. Paying off credit cards is always a good feeling and once we get the other one paid off, we will only owe on our house...both cars are paid for. This truly is a blessing from God.

Now I have had a few people tell me, "well, your wife doesn't NEED a laptop...you have a computer at home and you don't need the GPSr since it is a hobby. You are trying to get out of debt so you should cut back more." Well, two things I have to say about that: 1) It is none of your business. 2) My wife and I have cut back more than most people (we haven't charged anything since the last dog surgery 1.5 years ago, our cable is at the bare minimum I can have to still get broadband, we do not have a home phone, neither of us has any nicer new clothes, I work from home two days a week, our eating out is very low cost once or twice a week, I mow my own grass, and I even cut the grass of one of my neighbors) and we still have been tithing, even though my wife quit her part time job and I lost 2.5% of my pay thanx to cutbacks at work.

We just got back from vacation and for the 5th year in a row (maybe longer, I am not sure) we did not use our credit card for any of it. 100% Florida vacation at a very nice secluded beach house in cash. Not many people do that. Oh, I forgot to mention that we have not charged anything on our credit cards during Christmas for at least five years. We are learning to live on one paycheck (mine), tithe, get out of debt and still do a few fun things.

To be honest we have gotten quite good at living on a budget. While it would be nice to treat my wife to some nice, new clothes and fancy evening out, she is realistic at this point. We have even had people ask us to help them get back on track with their home finances.

Once we get the credit card paid off, we will only owe on the house and then we need to do some more improvements, namely flooring (we are still on the original carpet of our 10 year old home) and living room furniture (cheap 10 year old stuff from Rooms To Go). Once that is done I am sure an appliance, hot water heater, furnance or A/C unit will need replacing.

So say what you will...I am stimulating the economy by buying a few things, paying off some debt, and saving a little. I am going to use this gift from God to give us a moral boost that we need.

Prayer Request

This is not well known (outside of church) but my wife has a growth (non-cancerous) on one side of her thyroid. It is inhibiting the thyroid enough that she has to take meds to keep things in check. She went back for a follow-up a few days ago and the doctors have discovered that the lump is growing and now there is another growth on the other side of her thyroid (if you have never seen what the thyroid looks like, click here). She is scheduled to go back and have the newest growth tested and hopefully it will be benign. Her mother died of cancer (cervical/uterine) so my wife is pretty nervous, although she will not admit it.

Nonetheless she will most likely need surgery (but that is a given yet...we will know in a few weeks). While this is not an overly dangerous procedure, it is still surgery. Please be in prayer for the peace that only Jesus Christ can provide for both of us.

God is the ultimate healer. His love is perfect. I take solace in the fact our souls are safe with him, no mater what this world throws at us.

But, I Am The PRESIDENT!

Friday and Saturday were very quiet work-wise. I vacuumed the house on Saturday, played with the dog we were pet sitting, took a nap, and watched "Red Dawn" for the millionth time...those were the high points. On Sunday I went to Sunday School and Church and then to a little Mexican place for lunch. My wife and I shared the combination fajitas (and still had some to take home) and headed back to the house.

It had been quiet all weekend long from an on-call perspective. Enough so that I decided to grab as many of the five new 9key hides in our town while nothing was going on.

I drove by the first one, "The Devil Needs Dental Work", but was unable to find it. To be honest, a lone adult male wandering a neighborhood park has a hard task in front of him if he is trying to find a well hidden geocache without looking like a pedophile. Needless to say I did not stay lone. There is only so much time you can spend in a cedar tree and look "inconspicuous".

The next one I went to (La Cucaracha) was a little more involved than I was dressed for. it was hidden under a low bridge that crosses a drainage ditch. I needed to be wearing boots and all I had on was my well ventilated sneakers so I passed this one up as well.

The next one on my list was "Private Eyes". The log entries intrigued me enough that I was optimistic about getting this one. After a false start, I found the little (pea sized) cache and signed the log. I laughed the entire time.

With one cache out of three, I headed off to "Got Cache?", a five gallon bucket with several small cache containers hidden inside. When I found it, I was very pleased to see four travel bugs inside. So with much eagerness, I logged the TB serial numbers and closed the cache back up. I almost got back to the truck before I realized I had failed to sign the log, so I trotted back to sign it. As I was heading back to the truck (for the second time) I ran into another cacher, "Drooling_Mongoloid", who was placing four more TB's in the cache. We introduced ourselves, swapped a few stories, and he even let me write down the serial numbers from the TB's he had. After that was done, I bid him farewell and I headed off to my last stop, "Montgomery Farm".

Montgomery Farm is a high end subdivision with a wildlife area and a paved nature trail winding through it. I found the cache in short measure and was able to inventory it (I discovered another TB), sign the log, and replace it just as three dog walkers were rounding the bend. I hopped in my truck after the short walk back and started back home.

On the way home my mobile rings. It is the local help desk who has a customer requesting priority on a ticket he has submitted. The ticket is a single user issue regarding his Blackberry. I explained that single user issues are never high severity unless the user is a VIP, which this guy was not. The help desk thanked me for the info and I hung up.

Two hours later my boss calls me and asks me about the case. When I tell him, he agrees with my decision and we end the call. End of story. Not.

The next morning my colleague gets a phone call from one of the Accoutn Mgrs. One of the higher up directors asked that the case I had refused the previous day be escalated. Against better judgement we did and when the tech was informed, he just sighed and shook his head. It seems the person who is having this issue USED to be the President of a company that the company we support bought out. Now instead of being "President", he is given the title of "Director" or something, however he is still not considered VIP and that burns him. Well, all I can say is, "Welcome to the real world, sir." It is something we have had to deal with for a long time here in the trenches.

When a person is used to being a big fish in a small pond, that person is used to getting things done their way. The company that bought them out has done a lot in regards to keeping then happy, but they are having problems adjust from a 1000 person company to a 60,000 person company. Try as they might, they are just not the big fishes any more.

We have fielded a lot of complaint calls from the company that was bought out. Most of the complaints have been WAN related, something that w are not contracted to work on. So when a problem arises for them they call us, we see that it is a WAN issue (or something else we are not responsible for, like their PDA's) we hand the issue to the mother company, since that is what they do. The the company that was bought out calls us complaining about the service they are getting...which is, in effect, THEM!

You gotta love corporate America.

It Finally Hit

All was quiet until noon or so on Thursday. That is when the work actually started.

Monday through Wednesday, work was quiet. Very few phone calls made it to us and none of them were of any importance. Thursday morning was more of the same, but sometime around lunch that all changed. Three high severity issues hit basically at the same time. Thankfully, two of the three were solved by the time I went on call at 5:00 PM. I was blessed with no additional calls that night. The last issue is still being worked on, although the last note states that they think it is resolved and are waiting for the customer to test the solution. Either the customer has forgotten to contact the tech, she is slow, or she has not tried it yet. I am betting on the former. Customers are quick to scream when something doesn't work, but ask them to contact you when they are done testing and they completely forget.

Typical.

Today has been quiet so far. It would be nice if it stayed that way all weekend. I have to go on call in three weeks since my TL switched with me last week. If I have to go on call again so soon, I want the chore to be as painless as possible.

Grrrrrrrrrrrr...

Now this really burns my toast. How can anyone (especially a celebrity) make a stupid comment like, "“It didn’t make financial sense for me to keep paying a mortgage on a home that was basically owned by someone else.” (Hat tip to Michelle Malkin)? Grrrrrrrrrr. Isn't that what a mortgage is? He is just upset because the property has lost value and he could not see paying a large mortgage on something worth less than he paid for it. Where is his integrity?

This whole mortgage mess is really beginning to bother me. We have several homes in our modest middle income neighbor hood that people have abandoned overnight. The yard becomes overgrown and choked with weeds and the newspapers and mail begins to pile up. It is no secret what happened, even before the "FORECLOSURE" signs go up. My neighborhood was a nice newer middle class neighborhood with few teen kids running the streets. That is until banks started giving loans to people who could not afford them (via an ARM). Then, when the rate changed on the loan, the families panicked and jumped ship. Now if you lose your job and CANNOT make the payment, that is one thing. But when you are gainfully employeed and CHOOSE to let your property go, "Shame on you".

National Day Of Prayer

This morning at 6:00 AM I went to participate in the NDoP at our church. I did not expect many people to be there at 6:00 AM and I was correct. The attendants were the senior pastor, the associate pastor, the senior elder, and myself. Our church is open from 6:00 AM to 9:00 AM (we have a Christian school on our premises and we cannot interfere with their schedule) so I expect most people to show up between 8:00 and 9:00 AM.

We had seven prayer stations set up (plus communion, for those so inclined) to allow the participant to pray for specific groups/subjects (military, church, family, government, education, business, and media) as they desired. I stopped at each station for a couple of minutes then headed to the back of the sanctuary to pray for specific needs (I have a lot of friends who ask me to pray for them and I have taken the liberty of praying for others as well). The senior elder asked me to join him and the others to pray for our senior pastor who has been having dizzy spells lately. We prayed and then chatted about things in general. The senior pastor has asked my wife and I to become prayer partners during service. We (along with a few others) would be available during the service to pray with people if they request it. Considering I feel that my verbal prayers are rather mundane, I was surprised that we were asked. However I was reminded that it is the inward prayers of our heart that God is really listening to and since my heart has softened considerably over the past 15 years, I guess it makes sense after all.

Anyhoo...I had to get home to start work so I bid the men farewell and headed back to the house for coffee and cinnamon rolls (the rolls were left over from last nights care group gathering...we had breakfast for dinner and dear Lord that was GOOD) before I started my shift.

If you are a Christian, be reminded that today is the day all Christians unite in prayer for our nation. If you have not accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior, then all I will say is that he died for the sins of all mankind...yours and mine. All he asks in return is to trust him to guide your life.

Peace.

Upgrade To Hardy Heron

Ubuntu 8.04 (code name "Hardy Heron") was released recently and I decided to upgrade to see if the newer version was any better. For the most part I like what I see. The biggest problem for me is not related to the OS, but to Ubuntu's decision to include a beta program as the release choice. The program is one I use daily and it has proven to be somewhat buggy. The program is Firefox 3, Beta 5.

FF3B5 seems to me (and to a few others whom I have chatted with) to have more of a memory leak than FF2 did. While I had to restart FF2 every couple of days, I find myself restarting FF3B5 several times per day. The other problem I have noticed is with TVTime. For whatever reason it wants to grab my web cam as the video source, even after I tell it to use my Hauppauge TV Tuner card. While this is a simple sudo nano/etc/tvtime/tvtime.xml fix (changing video1 to video0) it is very annoying. I have been putting up with this ever since I installed TVTime a year ago. It is a bug I wish the TVTime programmers would fix.

Ubuntu 8.04 loads pretty quickly and all the programs I have tested so far seem to work very well. It seems the only problems I have experienced have been related to Firefox. Videos from Youtube and MMAlinker.com are choppy a bigger share of the time and sometimes the browser just locks up, forcing me to kill and restart it.

When I upgraded my sandbox at work (a Dell 733 mhz, 256 RAM) it did surprisingly well...enough that I tried it at home the same day. The cleam up module of the install got rid of a lot of clutter I had built up over the past 3 years on that box (it has been upgraded many times) but did not get rid of as much at home on my main PC, (Intel 3 ghz P4 with 512 RAM) as I had hoped. It still has about a gig more stuff on it than my sandbox does and I am not really sure why. I guess I need to investigate more.

The bottom line...there is no real reason to upgrade if you are using Gutsy Gibbon (7.10) unless you want all the latest versions. Hardy Heron is the long term support version and it will be one you will want to upgrade to, but I think I would wait until FF3 is officiall released. HH has had updates every day since I upgraded to it...a sign that it is not complete...but close.

God Is Good

While it is only Wednesday, I can say that God has been good to me so far.

* My first two days of on call have been uneventful.
* Work has been quiet (so far).
* The dog we are pet sitting has been a dream. She sits in the office with me and is very well behaved. She does not even act like she misses her owner at all.
* I have had two great nights sleep. The weather has been cool enough to make it comfortable.

I dropped off two travel bugs (TB's) at one of my caches that is close by last night. One originated in Texas and has been all over the US and parts of the world and is now back in the Lone Star State. The owner e-mailed me when he got the notification that I had collected it in Florida. He hopes to see it again soon. While I did grab one at lunch yesterday, it was only a small tide me over until I can get out after I am off house arrest. I may sneak out this weekend if it is slow. If nothing is going on by Sunday afternoon, then chances are I will be able to.

We grilled steaks last night for dinner. Say what you will about Kroger meats, but their filet mignon is good. Not steak house quality, but once I am done with it is is pretty darn tasty. The only other thing we had with dinner was a large salad and some light ice cream with fresh strawberries for dessert. Awesome.

I have an idea or two for new geocaches that I hope to investigate once I get off house arrest. I am itchin' to get out and hunting some as well. I hope to have 500 by my one year geocaching anniversary. I am at 393 right now.

Homecoming

Normally, coming back home from vacation is the pits. I dread going back to my job and "the real world" just seems to drag me down. This time, it seems different. And it shouldn't. Things are not stacked in my favor this week:

* I am on call
* We are pet sitting (yes we have three dogs in our house this week, while I am on call)
* The master bathroom is out of commission until my wife finishes the floor (hey, she started the project...who am I to butt in?)
* I am operating on about 6 hours of sleep per night (last night I got seven)

Now, I realize it is only Tuesday and things do change but yesterday at work was slow and I did not get called last night (yeah!), the dog we are pet sitting has been very good and to top that off, she really like hanging out with me. She does not whine or bark and stays in her gated area (the utility room) without complaining.

I have also received a few e-mails from friends (which are coming at a good time for me). Some (actually most) are commenting on the beach pictures, while others are going through personal struggles and have allowed me to pray for them. I consider it a blessing to be able to pray for my friends. It helps me remember that God loves me. He has blessed me no matter what "bad" things have come my way. My soul is safe with him and is not doomed to an eternity in Hell away from my Lord.

Yesterday I "splurged" and ate lunch at Chik-Fil-A. I say splurge because a chicken sandwich combo with a shake instead of a soda is $7.19 . I normally do not pay more than $5 for lunch (when I eat out...which is rare) so this was a treat. I really had a hankering for their coffee-caramel milkshake and what better way to get one tha in a combo?

I am still in the process of weeding through a week of news so if blog posts are moer infrequent than normal then you know why.

Too Funny

While at the beach, I noticed this lager was advertised everywhere. I have a friend who is nicknamed the same thing but he has had the nickname for a looooooong time.

Too funny.

A Long Drive Home

We got up early on Saturday to pack and tidy up before we dropped off the keys to the house and headed home. We had a 14-15 hour drive ahead of us and I wanted to get started as soon as possible. However, I was not going home until my wife, the dogs, and I had a final walk on the beach. We savored every minute. If I think hard enough, I can still feel the sand between my toes.

We hit the road at 9:30 AM local time. My wife asked me to drive first and I did...nine hours! I stopped for gas and bathroom breaks (and once to eat) but other than that I drove straight through from Florida to Louisiana. Once in Louisiana, I let my wife drive for a few hours (three I think) until we got into Texas, then I took over again. I really did not mind the drive until about an hour from home then I really began to feel it. Once we got home I felt much better...that is until I noticed the water leak in the master bathroom.

When we travel I close the valves to the toilets and the washing machines. I have known several people go on vacation and come back to a flooded house due to a burst hose or some other issue. We had our water leak because the valve on the toilet in the master bathroom only leaks when it is closed. I was not aware of that until we got back at midnight Saturday night when we came home to a very wet bathroom. By the time we got settled, it was 1:00 AM Sunday morning.

I got up and got ready for church but my wife was not going to leave the bathroom in the condition it was in so she stayed back and started working on it. The carpet was ruined (it was 10 years old anyway) so she removed that, the padding, the tack strips and then cleaned the area. Next will be patching the floor so it can be painted. We have concrete slab foundations here in the this part of Texas and carpet it usually placed directly on the concrete with only a layer of padding under it. Painting floors is an emergency fix when funds are tight.

I went to church and then came h0me with Chinese food for lunch. We ate that then I walked the dogs (I did not get to earlier because it was raining) and then cleaned up and put away vacation supplies. Once that was all done, it looked like it was dry enough to start mowing grass so I got dressed for that. The grass was very high and I was surprised that it had grown so much in 10 days. I finally got finished with the two yards (ours and our neighbors) just as the sun was going down. I updated her bill, checked e-mail, and took a shower. It has been a very long day...actually the past two days have been event filled...and I am tired. I think I better get to bed.

Night.

Our Last Full Day

Upon waking up this morning my wife and I were both sad. It would be our last full day at this small piece of paradise and we were going to miss it. My wife asked if we could go back to Apalachicola today and I agreed that it would be fun. So after our normal morning ritual of coffee, breakfast, and a beach stroll, we got cleaned up and went into town.


We stopped off at the grill we had lunch at a few days before and again had a fantastic meal. After I paid the bill, we decided to try to grab a few geocaches (we only grabbed two, but we got some good pics) and explore. After a couple of hours of tooling around town, we headed back to the beach house. Before we got back I asked my wife if she would like some ice cream. Her eyes lit up (we had been pretty good so far this trip) and said yes. So we drove to Coneheads to grab some Blue Bell ice cream cones. On the way back, we stopped off at the Port Saint Joe Lighthouse. Both my wife and I were pretty disappointed, so we we just went back to the beach house.


We ate dinner and then took the dogs for a long walk. While I took the camera on our last night, I really wished I would have grabbed it the night before. That sunset was breath taking and par for the course, I missed it. I really need to take the camera with me everywhere.

More Of "A Whole Lot Of Nothing"

Our week was coming to end quickly but neither my wife nor I was stressed out about it. We have had the most relaxing vacation we have ever had to date and we both have thoroughly enjoyed it.

I have been getting up a tad earlier each morning since we have been on vacation. We have not stayed up late, 11:00 PM or so but have gotten at least eight hours sleep each night. I can tell the rest is doing me me good. While I have not thought much about work, it has crossed my mind a few times. Mostly I hope that my colleague/office mate has not been too overwhelmed with issues since he is by himself while I am gone.

This morning is no different than the previous mornings. I got up and took the dogs outside (carrying Little Man) to get them to use the bathroom and when we get back to the beach house, I brew a small pot of coffee for me and my wife. Once we finish our breakfast, we head out to the beach for a walk to collect shells and to exercise the dogs. A lunch of leftovers and Coke round out our exciting afternoon.

We watched a lot of TV, surfed the web on spotty (borrowed), on again off again wifi, and napped until dinner time. Once we had dinner, we took a long walk on the beach (with the dogs) and settled down to watch some TV. Tonight is "Lost" and being on a beach is an interesting way to watch that show.

Caching In Apalachicola

We started the day later than I wanted to but it worked out nonetheless. My wife took The Golden for a walk and I took Little Man a little later. He was not interested in walking so our stroll was cut short. While my wife and her dog were out, I checked e-mail on the spotty “borrowed” WiFi we have been using. Since the weather back in Texas has been bad, the geocaching mail has been light. Other than that, nothing of any importance was in the inbox.

Later in the morning, we drove to Apalachicola for lunch, some exploring, and of course, geocaching. We spotted a great little cafe/grill in town and had a great lunch. My wife and I split a bowl of probably the best chowder we have ever had as an appetizer. It was very good...I could not believe how much my wife liked it.

For the main course, my wife had a salad topped with grilled shrimp and I had a blackened grouper sandwich. Both were great and the bill total was not as much as it was on the previous trip out and this meal was much better than that.

After lunch my wife and I wandered around town and grabbed a few caches. I only managed three out of the eight or so I had planned, but they were pretty nice little micros. One, listed as a micro was actually a nano...not sure why the hider chose to call it what he did. It did slow me down some but I managed to find it in short order. I was rather disappointed at the placement of most of the caches but I guess different areas have different ideas about how to hide a cache.

We came home about 4:00 PM and took care of the dogs and ate left overs from the night before. We have been pretty god about spending money so far...mostly because gas has been so high. We can go out once every other day for an average priced meal. While I do not mind eating leftovers, we are on vacation and I want to splurge just a little.

We do not have any plans for tomorrow. I guess we will take things as they come.

A Whole Lot Of Nothing

We started the day off (late) with a beach walk to collect some seashells. We found several nice ones and I managed to get a few pics as well. I ran into a couple of people who told me that a shark was caught very close to shore a few miles up the peninsula. And on top of that, an alligator became confused and swam across the bay and was caught further up the coast. We had seem alligator areas in the park, but I did not think they would be around here. Guess I was wrong.

The rest of the day was lazy, filled with naps and lounging around the house. We watched TV and ended the night with sunset walk on the beach. For the second time during the vacation we spotted dolphins offshore. Some of them were quite close...10-20 feet from shore. They were fantastic.

Dolphins were not the only animal we saw. We spotted some ducks (I thought that odd) and some horses and riders on the beach as well. One thing I can say for sure is that this vacation has been restful.

We ate leftovers and drank Coke Zero. We both wanted icecream but did not want to drive 10 miles for it.

A Good Start

After a late start, my wife and I went on a drive up the peninsula to St. Josephs Island State Park. I have only been at a few beach state parks before and enjoyed them quite a bit. This one was not all that great but it did have some nice spots. We grabbed the two geocaches in the area...both were well maintained and in good shape. When we left the park, we were hungry and decided to try a place that the owner of the beach house recommended but could not find it, so we went back towards the route we took to get to the beach house (towards Port Saint Joe) and found a local marina raw bar/grill. The food was good but pricey (come on, $14.00 for a grouper sandwich and fries?) and I figured eating out was not something we could afford to do often on this trip. We had planned on once a day, but it was looking like every other day would be pushing it.

After eating, my wife wanted to get some groceries and the local Piggly Wiggly and I noticed on my GPSr that a cache was very close by, so I grabbed it while she shopped and then I walked over to the store. $46 later (what would have been $30 back home) we headed back to grill our dinner.

The beach house had a nice if not run down, grill/smoker that I cooked hamburgers, hot dogs, and chicken on. I picked up some charcoal since lighter fluid was provided at the beach house, I figured I was set. It took a while to get the grill going, but when it finally got up to temp, it cooked very well. Charcoal is nice, but tricky and time consuming.

We finished the night off with a walk on the beach and some TV. While we have not had an “exciting” vacation so far, we really noticed that we needed the rest. Rest is good.

Oh, when did ducks start hanging out at the beach? I realize I am not the most observant person on the planet but I do not ever recall seeing ducks at the beach before.

Sorry, no pics of the them. Every time I saw them I didn't have my camera with me.

I Have Had Better Mornings!

Things did not get off to a good start on Sunday. I took the dogs (both of them) out to use the bathroom but the oldest (and smallest) slipped coming down the steps and did an end over scaring us both but thankfully he was not hurt. He is old and his footing is not very good...not to mention we are in a beach house that is up on pilings so we have to climb steps to get to it. I was very worried and prayed that I did not cause him any real damage. Needless to say I carried him down the stairs the rest of the trip. I don't think he liked that much, either.

All day long we stayed close to the beach house...not once starting the van to go anywhere. It was beginning to dawn on us how far out we were. You literally had to drive 15 miles to get to anything other than a beach cottage. I did however get to see some dolphins earlier on in the day. That was pretty cool.

Wanting to check e-mail, we turned on the laptop and tried to connect via dial-up but TWC did not have a local number in the area. Hmmm....I had expected this so I let the laptop sniff for local wireless connections and found 4 nearby, but they were all too weak to cling to very long. Usually in the morning was the best and only time we could connect. I really hated “borrowing” other people's wifi, but 4 out of the 6 were unsecured an I would not have used them if a local dial-up number could be had. I guess I could have installed an AOL trial...or maybe Netzero, but I shiver at the thought of either of those being installed on a PC.

We took it easy the rest of the day and hit the beach only a couple of times...once in the morning and once in the evening...taking advantage of the local laws allowing dogs on the beaches here.

We ate some of the groceries that we brought with us all day but realized we would need more food soon. That would be rectified the next day since I had plans to leave the area and explore. With nothing more to do, we watched a little TV and fell asleep on the same comfy beds we slept in the night before.

The Second Leg

The storms of the previous evening had past and the morning was bright and sunny. I had asked my wife if she minded if I went out to grab a few caches in Jackson before we left the hotel and continued on our way to Florida. She thought it was a good idea so I headed out with my caching supplies in hand.

The first cache was not far away. It was on the same (busy) road the hotel was on and I made short work of finding it. It had not been maintained very well (it needed a new log book) but a find is a find. It was not overly memorable, but at least I had one MS cache under my belt.

The next one on the list was close to the first one and gave me fits until I looked at the clue. It was hidden in the shutter of a local business under a large awning...enough that the GPS coords were off but I managed to find it nonetheless.

Feeling confident, I headed off to the next one...an ammo can on the property of a local church. How hard could it be? Well the answer to that question..."I have no idea". You see, when I got to the wooded area and hiked in ¼ of a mile to GZ, I found a TENT very close to where the cache should have been. Also, the forest canopy was so thick I could not keep lock on the birds in space that were guiding me. After grumbling about that one, I moved on to easier findings. Or at least I thought.

A quick hop East put me at the reservoir that was nearby. “Easy”, I thought to myself. Little did I know that this was a biking and running hot spot for the locals. Muggles were everywhere. I figured I would abandon my search here and grab a rather unique Geocoin in a nearby cemetery.

I found the cemetery but it was not well maintained and the overgrowth and the canopy (not to mention the lack of time) gave me no choice but to abandon this search as well. Hummmph. So far for caching success in Mississippi!

I made my way back to the hotel dripping wet. The previous night's rain had drenched the area, so my shoes, socks, and pants were soaked. I grabbed a quick shower, changed clothes, and went with my wife to eat breakfast downstairs.

After breakfast I loaded up the van and after my wife walked the dogs, we were on our way. While the distance we needed to cover was less than 400 miles, it turned out to be a long 400 miles. The highways we took were through small towns with low speed limits. Needless to say we made it to the beach at 6:30 PM local time...we had planned on 3:30 PM.

The beach house was very nice but it was not as clean as we had hoped. We unloaded and unpacked just a few things before heading out to the beach for a quick walk. After a quick perusal of the sandy shore, we came back and put up the dogs and finished unpacking what we wanted for that night. We came back to the beach after dark and walked alone along a moonlit beach...moonlight shimmering on the water like liquid silver. All I could say was, “Wow”.

While we were on the beach I checked my phone to see what time it was and then I noticed that we did not have any mobile phone service here. I even stood on the observation deck of the beach house but that did not help. No mobile and no internet service. A first for me since I took the mission trip to the New Mexico mountains.

Storm Wind

Thursday...storms dominated the evening. But I am getting ahead of myself, so let me back up.

Wednesday and Thursday are WAFO (Work Away From Office) days. We have a simu ring option on our hotline at work that rings two phones at the same time...me and my colleagues mobile phones. It isn't perfect but it is better than working from the office every day. Wednesday was light...not much went on and that made me happy.

Thursday I was working solo since my colleague had the day off. Again it was pretty slow...only three calls (two of which were not mine to handle) and then my shift was over. My wife wanted to get out of the house so she dropped me off at Best Buy while she went to Wal-Mart. I had a gift certificate (from work) I wanted to redeem and my wife needed to pick up a few things to take on vacation.

I ended up getting an LED flashlight with the gift certificate (I know, not much but it was only a $25 card) but it is cool and I can use it geocaching :-)

We got home as the storm winds were blowing pretty hard. Rain was on its way but the dogs still needed walked. I rushed out with both of them and made it back just before the rain came. And come it did.

We had a crazy storm hit the metroplex with hail hitting to the west of of us. It has to be the third week in a row we have had bad weather on the weekends. The storm blew through quickly and the rest of the night was calm albeit cold.

The next morning we packed up the van in the cool morning air to start our vacation trip to Florida. While we had hoped to get out by 7 AM, we did not leave until 8 AM or so. That was not bad because we made good time all the way to Jackson, MS...our stopover point and my first Geocaching outside TX since I started seven months ago.

Things were going great but then we ran into bad weather. We outran it but by the time we made it to Vicksburg for lunch, it caught up with us. As we finished the storm had past but our trek would take us back into it on the way to Jackson.

When we arrived in Jackson, the rain was coming down and we barely made it inside when the storm hit with a fury. No Geocaching for me on Friday. That is sad, but my wife told me that I could run out a bit before we left for Florida. I plan on getting up at 6 AM, walk the dogs and then grab a few caches before we leave. I have six mapped out close so I think I can get them before we leave.

The sun finally came out before it set but I did not want to chance caching at night in a strange city.

The Difference Between...

Radical Islam (just pick any link on the right) and Radical "Christianity" (Mormons). Personally I do not recognize Mormon's as Christians because they do not believe that Jesus Christ is the only personal Savior of mankind, but since most non-Christians lump them in that category, I will for now.

The Mormons responded with song an prayer. Radical Islam responds with bombs and beheadings.

Islam = Religion of Peace? You decide.

*** Just a note, the more I study Islam (I have a copy of the Qur'an now...I am looking for a copy of the Hadith in English) the more you see Islam awareness posts. This blog has morphed a lot and has become stale at times. I still plan on updates of what is going on in my life but not as often as I used to. ***

No Meat on Them Bones

My posting has been pretty erratic the past couple of months and for those of you who are regulars, I am sorry about leaving you hanging. While nothing major has been going on, I have been keeping pretty steady at home and work.

Work has been moderate to slow most of the time although figure it will pick up this week or next. Most of the issues I have been dealing with have been the same old things that keep cropping up, although I get surprised every now and again with a new issue I have not heard of before.

We were scheduled to receive our 3% cut in pay the first of March but that was delayed for a couple of weeks and then my boss (who has been against this cut from square one) thought he would do us a favor by "forgetting" to file the paperwork for it. Well his good intentions left me (and all the other on call people in my business unit) FIVE PERCENT short on my last paycheck. Needless to say that having my paycheck short that much really hurt and we are cutting it really close this month...and we still have a vacation to go on next week. We have not charged anything on our credit cards in over a year (the last thing was The Golden's knee surgery) and have been on a completely debt free vacation for the past four years. Go us! This year, while the beach house is all paid for, the price of gas and food will push the limits of our budget. I am glad I was able to earn a little money cutting grass on the side. That should cover the amount I lost on my last paycheck. Oh , I have been told that the missing funds will be on a future check. I hope so!

I have been geocaching here and there, picking up an odd cache or two at lunch and on the way home from work. Saturday when I went out I finally found one that just amazed me with the camo. I have seen hides like this before but this one was far superior to any of the others. I ended up getting 14 on Saturday, striking out on three (two of which I am sure are gone), one of those being a night cache. I got to the final area on that one but the area was too large to cover by flashlight. I will try to get it during the day.

I also was finally able to get a very hard puzzle cache that I started several months ago. The puzzle requires a lot of good basic math skills as well as a GPSr unit that will allow you to project a waypoint, neither of which I have. So I had to take my time to do the math and plot the course on a map with a protractor. While I had the general area, I did not have the exact coords that I would have had if my borrowed GPSr could project waypoints. So I wrote the cache owner and gave him my calculations and told him the general area that I thought was correct to see if he would "narrow the field" a bit for me since I am not up to date with the proper tools. He was impressed at my manual plotting and told me that I was very very close to where it was (I did have it with 30 feet...take that Garmin!) so he sent me the coords since I worked so hard on this one. That is the good news. The bad news is that when I went after the cache, IT WAS GONE! So I went back at night with a flashlight to check the area (one of the areas it could have been...and was is a favorite tactic of geocache hiders) and my suspicions were confirmed...the cache had been vandalized. I got home and wrote the cache owner but he did not respond for a couple of weeks (he had been overwhelmed with work) but yesterday he was able to get back to me and inform me that it was back on line. It seems that someone knows the cache is there and keeps vandalizing it when it goes back online. Well, I wasted no time and headed over this morning on my way to work and nabbed it. One more off my list!

I have mentioned that vacation is coming up. My wife and I will be going to Cape San Blas, Florida in a few weeks to enjoy a week of surf and sand. While money will be tight (thanx to work...) we will be able to enjoy the area and decompress. While the beach is not my personal favorite (gimme the mountains any day of the week) it is a nice place to visit. Besides, my wife LOVES the beach and I want to make her happy. Now since this is more of my wife's idea of a good vacation, I figured that the activities would be geared more towards her and I was ready to accept that. Imagine my surprise when she informed me that she wanted to stop overnight in Jackson, MS and we could go caching while we were there AS WELL AS when we make it to the beach. I was thrilled at the notion that I would be able to geocache in a couple of other states.

I went online to see what I would be able to find at both locations and was surprised to see that there are a number of regular sized caches within 15-20 miles of each area. Life is good!

I got an e-mail from my (pay attention...this may get complicated) ex-wifes daughter, who at one time was living with me and my ex (when we were married), making her (at that time) my step daughter. She is no relation to me now, but we keep in touch via e-mail every now and again. This daughter, whom I shall call Cindy, is now a Christian and it appears she is having a very hard time with her mother's drinking. Now Cindy does not live with her mother...Cindy is married and expecting her third child. Cindy went on to tell me how she thinks her mother, who is 40, needs to grow up and stop acting like a 16 year old. I was pretty shocked by that...normally Cindy defends her mother tooth and nail, but I guess that has changed.

Cindy also gave a report on her brother (my son) and his bad habits, but he is 20 and his own man, so to speak so he will have to deal with any fallout.

Names

It seems everyone wants Yahoo...both Microsoft and Google have been mentioned. Did you catch the names that have been tossed around? Microhoo and YahooGoogle? Personally I like Yahoogle better or maybe GooHoo.

Is "Jihadist" A Bad Word?

The Sun doesn't think so. Reporting about a terror attempt in China during the Olympics:

“We face a real terrorist threat,” Wu said.

He said police had confiscated almost 10 kilos of explosives and eight sticks of dynamite and “jihadist" literature in the latest raids in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.

...

He said the gang had been acting on orders from a radical Islamic Xinjiang independence group, East Turkestan Islamic Movement.


Call it what it is...Jihadist terror.

Ya Think?

Obviously these women don't read the Qur'an or they would know that THIS IS NORMAL for fundamentalist Muslims at least in the Middle East...

From AKI:

According to data presented at the conference from the director of the family health centre, 68.1 percent of divorced women said they had lost their sexual appetite a few months after their wedding.

Other data showed that 59.1 percent were angry every time they had sex with their husband and 66.8 percent felt used by their husbands as an instrument for sexual satisfaction, while for 63.9 percent sexual pleasure was a completely unknown concept.

Sheesh.

It Was A Good Run

Well, they did not win the NCAA tournament but the UNC Tarheels are still number one in my book. The played very all all the way through the tournament up until the Kansas game. The Jayghawk's (who went on to win the championship) played a much better game than the Heels, knocking them out during the final four.

I guess there is always next year.

With that in mind, how many of the underclassmen will stay and how many will elect for the NBA draft? WIll Hansbrough stay? Will Lawson?

Franticly Seeking Cellular

Well, today has been eventful! The nice thing is I also learned a lesson: When God speaks, listen and obey.

I mowed the yard last night (as well as our MIA neighbor's, Pam) and came in tired. I watched a little TV then grabbed a shower and went to bed. I woke up this morning and had coffee and decided that I would go Geocaching in the morning before I did any housework. My wife was going to church to help clean the parsonage for the new pastor and his family. I figured that there would be enough help so I decided to follow my original plan and geocache.

Before I left I felt that God was asking me to help the women at church work on the parsonage, but I became greedy and went on to spend my time on me. That, was a mistake.

I left at 8:30 and grabbed the first cache, "Spot" at a secluded wood right off Main Street. I had my phone in the truck and thought I had lost it until I got back and noticed it clipped to my visor. I popped in the coords for the next cache, 9key's "Faceless Multination Utility Company" and started my search. I found stage one quickly and that led me to stage two, which again, I found quickly. It led me to the final...an ammo can. No problem. Wait a minute...it has a padlock on it. Where is the key? I figured the key was close by, so I looked. I found nothing so I called 9key. He did not answer (I get the feeling he is not a big phone conversation person) so I left a message. I walk back to my truck and sit down and then I figure out where the key is. So I go back and get the key and unlock the ammo can. I sign the log, put it all back in hiding and move on.

My next stop was an easy one off of North Allen Heights...it took longer to walk from the parking lot than it did to find the cute plastic owl container. I signed the log and moved on to the last two...both 9key specials.

I found "Marble Falls" quickly and even though I was on the wrong side of the creek (a rarity for me most of the time), I was able to cross because I had my combat boots on. I found the small Lock-n-Lock container, signed the log, and headed out to "Brer Rabbit's Fun Boxes".

"BRFB" was a multi stage just north of "Marble Falls". I found the jump off point and headed into the woods towards stage one. Even though I had no idea what to look for, I found the cute redirector and the clues to get me to stage two. I decided to bushwhack to stage two, but came to a creek and since I had taken off my boots, I decided not to cross it. I hiked east toward the road and then north along the road until I got directly across from stage two. I found stage two and noticed that I was missing my cell phone. I had the case still clipped to my belt, but it was empty. I began to panic and started back tracking but realized I was never going to find it. Well, I figured I was at stage two, I might as well go after the final. I eventually found the final (which was SWEET!) and then headed back, attempting to find my phone along the way. That was pretty much useless so I headed home, hoping to find my wife there so we could go back and hunt for the phone by calling it and listening.

I got home and my wife was not there so I washed the dishes and then ate. After about 1.5 hours or so she made it home so I told her what happened. She was very understanding and offered to go with me to look for it. We got ready to go and headed off to "Faceless" to see if I left the phone there. Nope. It was not there. So we headed north towards Brer Rabbit. We eventually found it thanx to my wifes keen hearing.

Lesson learned. When God tells you to do something, do it.

And, put your phone in your fanny pack!

WFH / WAFO

I have been able to Work From Home / Work Away From Office the past two days. Besides the fact I save $6.00 a day in gasoline (not sure home much electricity I am using but it has to be less than that), it really is nice to be in my own h0me office, getting up when I want, eating when I want and dressing how I want.

How did all this come around? My boss has flat out stated that since raises were practically non-existent, bonuses were small, and he cannot do much for us, that we needed to come up with ways to have perks that do not cost the company anything. My colleague came up with working from home 2 days a week and I came up with my company giving us our old laptops when they refresh us with new ones. Now to some of you that might not sound too neat, but to geek like me who only has one mediocre machine in the house (I have several dinosaurs that just don't cut it) and could use a second, this works out well. Will they agree? Prolly not, but at least I tried.

Oh, by the way, I will get a broadband and cell phone credit for working at home. It ain't much but it helps!

A New Week Begins

I have to admit that last week was the easiest house arrest (on call) I have ever dealt with. Once case to follow on Wednesday, one call on Friday evening (that was out of scope for on call) and one call Saturday morning. I wish all weeks on call were like that.

I could not go geocaching like I normally would last weekend, but I did manage to sneak out and grab a few after lunch on Sunday. There were 3 new ones close to home that I nabbed in short measure.

Saturday I cleaned house and dealt with the one issue that came in, washed dishes and did some laundry. Sunday was church (we had a guest speaker, one of our missionaries in Mexico) and a hot dog lunch in the fellowship hall. I ate a little and my wife ate less and we both left kinda hungry. However I left much earlier than she did since she had a lot of people to talk to and I needed to go let the dogs out and finish a load of laundry. Then of course, I went out and grabbed some caches! I managed to call my mom as well but after an hour of her repeating conversation's back to me...verbatim...I had to end the call. I love my mom, but I really cannot handle that.

I also watched a few of the NCAA tournament games and enjoyed the ones I saw. I was disappointed that WVU lost but it was to be expected. I am thrilled that UNC is going to the Final Four. GO HEELS!

I had a very hard time sleeping last night. I went to bed at 10:00 PM and was up at 12:30, then 1:30, then 2:00. I finally went into the living room to read and began to get sleepy at 2:30 AM. When the alarm went off I was wide awake and ready to go.

I have been reading some e-books on my PDA lately. I usually am not a big fan of e-books (I prefer the old fashioned ones personally), but I found some of the classics I had not read (or had not read in a long time) that piqued my interest. I am about 1/5 the way through George Orwell's, "1984". I still have "Brave New World to get to then I will look for others.

This Speaks Volumes

Also, "Fitna" has been released. It is the film produced by the Danish law maker. It looks like the film erroneously uses the picture of a rapper instead of the convicted killer the producer intended to use. Also the EU does not appear to happy with it either.

NCAA Update

I watched the Tarheels play last night...or at least the first half. CBS kept going back to the WV game since it was more interesting. True, the UNC-Washington game was a a blowout, but I still would like to be able to see my Heels play!

WVU played pretty well but lost to Xavier. I *almost* thought they were going to win, but fouls and poor shooting (not to mention a flurry of 3's from Xavier near the end of regulation) kept them from advancing to the Elite Eight. While it would have been nice to see them make it, maybe it is for the best. It gives them something more to strive for.

Dripping With Attitude

My wife has had errands to run several days this week and since I am on house arrest (on call) I have stayed home and washed dishes as well as walk the dogs. The other night I finished walking Little Man and was calling The Golden so I could get her some exercise. I called many times and finally The Golden started coming towards me...then she took a left turn, raised her nose in the air, and headed down the hall into our room where she plopped down on her bed. I am good enough to play fetch with, to chase (and be chased), but when I need her, I am not worth her time!

When my wife got home, I told her the story (with over exaggerated dog movements) and she about died laughing. When she called The Golden to go take a walk, that dog ran right up to her and sat down, waiting to have her leash put on her.

Maybe I will remember that when it comes time to feed her!!

Blow Dry

The wind has really been fierce the past couple of days. My 14 year old dog, "Little Man" can't stand the wind blowing in his ears so he is not too thrilled with our morning and evening walks. Personally, I am just hoping the roof holds up. I see a lot of shingles in the neighborhood after these winds have passed.

I am on house arrest this week. Amazing how fast it comes around. The good news is I will not have to be on "house arrest" again before vacation. The bad news is I am on call the minute I get back. Oh well. At least I get a vacation.

I played hooky from work yesterday. While I still had to be on call after 5:00 PM, I was free as a bird until then. What better way to spend a could y morning than to go geocaching in Murphy, TX. I spent three hours finding 13 caches. Most were pretty easy and I walked 3.5 miles total to collect 12 of them. The last one was out of the way so I drove over, grabbed it, and went home.

Once home, I ate lunch and entered all my caching finds on the geocaching web site. I had noticed that the cache I hid on Sunday had not been published yet. I guess the admins have been busy.

After all that I broke down and washed my Dakota. I really had no plans to wash it but my wife washed her van on Saturday and it looked so good when she got done (I only helped a little) that I was moved to wash mine on Wednesday. While it is not perfect (I still have trouble with windows), it looks a lot better. And of course, it runs better now that it is clean :) .

Can It Get Any Better?

Great weekend overall.

First, the weather was great on Saturday and I went 12/12 on geocaches, including the dreaded El Diablo, a 4.5 (out of 5) difficulty. Awesome work on the cache...the best craftsmanship I have seen yet.

Then Duke almost loses to a 16 seed team, then loses to my WV Mountainers. To top it off, UNC score over 100 points in each of its 2 games this weekend

Oh, the best news was on Sunday, Resurrection Sunday (Easter to most of you folks)...He is risen!

At Least The Rain Has Stopped

Wow. Yesterday's and last nights deluge was intense. Several places were flooded, including a park where I have geocached in the past. Sadly, most of the caches were not tethered down, so I fear they are lost.

Work was okay yesterday and so far today it has been quiet. There are not a whole lot of people in the building and the highlight has been the Swede asking me to help him fix his PC. It has hardware failure but I am not sure if it is only the HD or maybe the controller.

Last night I attended my first Church Board meeting as the trustee representative. It went well, but the down side is that you have to listen to things that you wish you didn't. Like most churches there are members who lead vey immoral life styles and when they want to get involved in ministry, that issue tends to rear its ugly head.

I got home at just about 9:00 PM and watched Jericho with my lovely wife. I was blessed and did not have to drive last night as the senior elder stopped by to pick me up.

I woke up rather tired this morning and to be honest I have been sleepy all day long. If I could take a nap, I would.

We have care group tonight but I do not know who is teaching the lesson. All I know is that we are meeting at someone else's house tonight since the normal host is sick. She has been sick for a week. I hope she gets well soon.

I Expected As Much

My TL is on vacation this week so I expected it to be a bit busier than normal. If Monday is any indication of how the rest of the week will go, Heaven help us.

I got into work and got settled. I read all the new e-mails and skimmed the threat board and then looked at my personal e-mail. I had no sooner finished reading that when two issues came in back to back. In a way it was nice because it kept me busy all morning, but I really do not enjoy trying to handle multiple things at once. I guess I just do not multi-task well.

The rest of teh day went pretty well but I did get one call that needed attention about 1.5 hours before I went home. It was not resolved before I left work, so it was handed over to the on-call guy. I would not have to worry about it until 7:00 AM the next morning.

I came home and ate a quick dinner of pulled pork sandwiches and chips before I walked the dogs and watched some TV. I went to bed early. I was pretty tired from sitting on my butt all day. Amazing how that wears me out more than physical labor.

The next morning I was able to walk the dogs before it started raining, so I figured things were going my way. However in the process of packing my lunch, I spilled a cup of cranberry juice all over the counter and the floor. So much for a smooth morning.

After I got to work it started to rain...hard. It has been raining for several hours and the roadways are almost flooded. At least work has been mostly quiet. The Swede has called me twice but even with the interruptions I was able to do one report and close out one of the open high severity cases. I guess we will see how the rest of the day goes.

Great Day!

Sunday was a very good day. First, I slept in until 7:00 AM and when I got up I had an inviting cup of strong coffee. The weather was not bad so I walked Little Man and then came back to get ready for Sunday School/Church.

Sunday school went well and the techer (who has a very bad back) had both his son and his adopted daughter with him. he was in good spirits and it showed in his teaching.

Sunday was also the first day for our new pastor (which reminds me, I need to update our mychurch.org web page) and his message was delivered very well. He made a few changes to the routine, but they were welcomed. And even though the service ran over, no one really seemed to mind too much.

After church my wife and I stopped by a little Italian place and much to our amazement, it was not busy and we were able to get in and out at our pace. The server was even prompt and courteous! His tip showed our gratitude.

My wife and I got home and let the dogs out. We gave them some fresh water and I got dressed to go out "stomping in the woods"...geocaching. My wife was going with me and that made the day even better.

We loaded up our geat after we both changed into older clothes and headed out. My wife found the first one very quickly and then we moved on the the next area, a green belt a few miles away. That location actually had a lot of memorable moments: The first cache was missing, the second cache was lying on the ground and when my wife put it back where she thought it went, I realized that no one other than a small child (or my wife) could get their arm in the hole to get it out! I had to ask my wife be brave and put her arm back into a dark hole to pull out the cache while I fixed it so it would not fall down so far.

The next cache was out in the open again and my wife figured out a way to make it findable but not overly obvious. The last one in that park was there but it was heavily damaged. It was one of the famed "JakeinTexas" hides and well worth the 3/3 rating.

We moved on to a few more and struck out on one of those as well. I think it is still there, but camo'd ver ywell. The rest presented no problems other than a muggle or two. By the time we headed back home we were tired and hungry and the dogs need to be fed as well. It was almost 6:00 PM before we got back (we left at 2:15 PM) and we were very quite content with the outcome of our day.

I finished up the day by logging all our finds and notes to the geocaching web site and then calling my my while I walked both dogs. I was tired, but it was such a great day. God really blessed us both.

Sore

I spent a good part of yesterday working on getting the parsonage ready for our new pastor who moves in with his family in about 2 weeks. It was a church workday with the goals of removing the carpet/padding and the wallpaper and border. The first part and the most of the second part went pretty quickly with our team. The last room however, had wallpaper that must have been attached with a super glue...it took a team of six (sometimes more sometimes less) five hours to remove it all. FIVE HOURS. I have glue under my fingernails that still will not come out.

The walls were riddled with nails where pictures once hung and I tore up a couple of my fingers on them. I bled rather profusely so I doubt I will have tetanus, although I prolly should get a tetanus shot next time I go to the doc, just to be safe.

After that I inhaled three hot dogs, some chips, and a diet soda. I tried to clean up best I could but I still was caked in glue. I am surprised I did not stick to the sheets last night.

After work was over at the parsonage I headed home, picking up some gasoline along the way. In the back of my mind I remember a new 9key cache...a terrain difficulty "3" nearby. My ego and pride got the best of me so I went after it before I went home to do some house work. I manged to find and sign it, but it was not without some difficulty. While I would put it at a "3.5" (I had to shimmy up 12 foot of tree, hug it with my legs, remove a rock that was covering the bole at the top, extract the cache, open it, sign it and return it all as I found it. Of course in the process I dropped part of the cache and had to go down after it then do the whole thing all over again. I am 42 years old and only in "fair" shape and that one almost kicked my butt! I was so proud of myself I had to call 9key and tell him I managed to get it.

Once the heroics/acrobatics were done, I went home and dried a load of clothes, folded them, recorded my antics on the geocaching web page, entered some receipts into AceMoney, and vacuumed the house...stripping the bed and changing the sheets as well. My wife came home shortly thereafter and we exchanged stories. She smiled and asked if she could join me on a caching run today and I eagerly accepted her offer. I like caching with her. A lot.

Later that evening I noticed my left middle finger had swollen about 50% larger. I saw a small prick near the joint where the pain was the greatest and figured I received a spider bite. This morning the pain and swelling are the same, give or take, but there is no discoloration...which I think is a good thing. Unless I am dead I am going caching...swelling or not!

Playing Catch Up

Well, I am again way behind in timely updates to this blog. I was pretty dedicated for a while but I seem to have slacked off quite a bit over the pat few months. Let's see if I can bring everyone up to speed.

I went geocaching (as usual) on Saturday and I was quite surprised to have my wife join me. While she did not last long (about 1.5 horus into a three hour trip) she did manage to find 2 or 3 of them on her own. While she is still a greenhorn, she is progressing pretty well. I ended that day at 298 finds. I was hoping to get 300 by Saturday, but I guess God had other plans.

Sunday was Sunday school and church. Since we had eaten out Friday and Saturday night, we ate sandwiches at home for lunch. My wife was going out to walk the dog the go to the grocery story and she expected me to go out caching, but I did not really feel like it (please don't tell my caching buddies!) so I just stayed home. We ahd "Voice of Faith", our once a month Sunday evening service that night and I guess I just did not want to tire myself out completely.

Monday I had the church trustee meeting. I have agreed to take the role as the Trustee representative to the admin board since our head trustee (the current rep) has to step down. The trustees have a lot of changes to prepare for and I hope we can step to meet the challenge.

Tuesday I worked on my presentation about Islam to our care group. It did not take long to finish it. It was not polished, but it was informative.

I took Wednesday as a vacation day and went geocaching in the morning before I came home to fertilize the yard and spray weed killer on the nasty growth that has taken over my neighbor's yard. That was a 2.5 hour chore. While I was out caching I met ThePadre. He is a bit of a local legend in North Texas. New cachers like myself stand to gain a lot by talking to him.

After I finished geocaching and doing the yard work, I got cleaned up and got ready for care group so I could present my material on Islam. The presentation went pretty well...I obviously am no scholar nor am I a great speaker, but the message was well received.

After care group, my wife and I cam home and walked the dogs before watching the two "Law and Order" episodes we recorded. One had to do with illegal dog fighting and my wife could not watch it. Her love of dogs has softened her heart to the point that those issues really bother her.

Work has been pretty quiet so far this week. My TL is taking Friday off and is on vacation all of next week. Fortunately, I am not on call so I get to hand over the daily trash to the on call guy at night. While I am sure I will be tested next week, I can take comfort in knowing I am not alone. I have help.

One funny thing to mention. While I was out geocaching yesterday, my truck keys somehow became detached from the rest of my key ring in a wooded area many miles from home. I was not sure where they fell off so I had to retrace my steps until I found them. If you think that is not too difficult, you have to remember that geocaches are not placed on trails so I was "bushwhacking" quitea bit. Finding them was almost like looking for needle in a haystack. To make this story even more interesting, ThePadre, whom I had met just hours before, told me that it was good idea to carry a spare key since he had lost one once himself.

Whoa!

On a weekly basis I peruse The Smoking Gun website. I get a chuckle once in a while reading about the crazy stuff people do and get in trouble with the law. One of the more popular features of the site is the "Mugshots" section of the site. This morning while I was viewing some of the photos, I saw this one and did a double take. While I cannot be sure, this picture really looks like one of my old bosses at Ericsson. The photo looks just like what I remember the guy looking like, only a tad older.

Twice In One Week

Wow...the DFW area has received snow not once but TWICE this week. The first time was about four inches and melted the same day and yesterday it began raining (hard) and then turned into sleet then eventually snow. We had been under a storm warning but it fizzled out...we received less than one inch.

Depending on who you believe it will be a high of 35 degree or 45 degrees. Both the Weather Channel and Weather Underground have different reports.

Key Word Search

I get rather annoyed when I get sent job notices from headhunters who do not take the time to verify that the jobs they are sending me are jobs I would be interested in. Today I was sent a listing for a contract job in MN. I live in TX. The odds of me taking a contract job in MN are pretty slim, wouldn't you think?

How did I get this listing? It would appear that they searched on some key words that are "hot" right now...many of which happen to be in my resume. They didn't however, check to see where I live in relation to where the job is. Oh, by the way, this is not a telecommuting job. Sigh.

On a more positive note, our church has formally accepted (via vote of the members) our new pastoral candidate as our new pastor. We just need to iron out an official starting date and we should be ready to roll.

I also received the rest of my tailored clothing last night from one of the guys I help with PC issues. He has given me four pair of trousers and a blue long sleeve shirt...all custom fitted. To be honest there are clothes that clients of former clients did not accept (for whatever reason) and have been taking up space in his inventory. Not that I could ever afford his prices, but the retail value of the clothing is about $1,000. Wow. It makes me think twice about charging him for the next house call! now to be fair, the clothing did not cost him that much and I do only charge 50% to members of our church but still, these are NICE clothes. The only thing I found wrong was a button hole issue on the sleeve. One sleeve has two button holes and the other has only one. I guess that makes it imperfect but I am not going to complain...it was free.

Way To Go, Gloria!

From Michelle Malkins blog.

Genocide?

“There are six million female lives lost in the world every year simply because they are female,” Steinem asserted, making a passing reference to pregnant women killed by male partners. Presumably, she’s not including the millions of unborn girls aborted around the world every year because of their gender. (Not exactly the kind of empowerment the fist-raising, bra-burning pro-choicers had in mind.) And nothing in Steinem’s record indicates that she’s thinking of the untold numbers of girls and women murdered for “honor” in the name of Allah by Muslim relatives."

It would be nice if the Femi-Nazi's would speak up when REAL atrocities are committed.

Well worth the read.

What Kind Of D&D Character Are You?

In honor of Gary Gygax (RIP)

I Am A: Lawful Good Human Cleric (5th Level)

Ability Scores:

Strength-12

Dexterity-12

Constitution-11

Intelligence-14

Wisdom-12

Charisma-11


Alignment:
Lawful Good A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. He combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. He tells the truth, keeps his word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion. However, lawful good can be a dangerous alignment because it restricts freedom and criminalizes self-interest.


Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.


Class:
Clerics act as intermediaries between the earthly and the divine (or infernal) worlds. A good cleric helps those in need, while an evil cleric seeks to spread his patron's vision of evil across the world. All clerics can heal wounds and bring people back from the brink of death, and powerful clerics can even raise the dead. Likewise, all clerics have authority over undead creatures, and they can turn away or even destroy these creatures. Clerics are trained in the use of simple weapons, and can use all forms of armor and shields without penalty, since armor does not interfere with the casting of divine spells. In addition to his normal complement of spells, every cleric chooses to focus on two of his deity's domains. These domains grants the cleric special powers, and give him access to spells that he might otherwise never learn. A cleric's Wisdom score should be high, since this determines the maximum spell level that he can cast.


Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

DFW Snow

It usually happens once a year for one day. In 2007, we did not get the honor of seeing this:


Being a WV boy by birth and living in WV/NC most of my life, I miss seeing this white stuff on the ground...we just do not get it here in the DFW area.

I will enjoy it while it lasts (it is supposed to get to 54 today).

Washout

I guess it was time for Texas to get a good hard rain again. I woke up this morning to the sound of thunder as well as rain pelting the roof and the windows. it was bad enough that my wife did not want me to even walk the dogs. She knew that they would not want to be outside while it was pouring so she waited until it subsided and she took them out for quick walk. I was getting ready for work while she took care of the dog walking ths morning. I guess I owe her some flowers for that.

I am off call and will not have to go back for another month...just in time for quarterly close, one of the busiest times of the year.

Call was not too bad this time. Yes I was woken up a couple of times at 2 AM for issues beyond my realm of authority and I did get a few calls this weekend asking me about maintenance going on, but overall it was doable.

I did sneak out for a little while to try to find a couple of puzzle caches that were local to us. I struck out on both but for different reasons on each. the first one required a bit of waypoint projection, something my older GPSr cannot do, so I solved the puzzle and e-mailed the owner my info to prove to him that I can do the hard part and he agreed to mail me the coords so I can look for it.. I mena, I know the general area and worked out all the math/puzzle stuff correctly, but without a proper GPSr, finding it would be rather time consuming...especially since it is supposed to be well hidden.

The second one I looked for has been muggled. That was really sad since it has been active for about five years now. I have put it off for a long time because of the perceived driving needed to solve the clues, but I was incorrect as in the clues were all within a few miles of each other. I solved the clues and went to the final one and figured out the cache was missing. I called Tizom to verify that I had the right locale and he confirmed it. Not only was I unable to find it, several other season cachers who have put this one off were unable to find it as well. I hate to see this icon go but maybe it is time to archive it.