Well finally I have the Co-Ax run through the two buildings for the Youth to watch the ball drop, the Kariokie is set up, the server is not crashing at this second  . . . so I’m getting out of dodge while the getting is good !

 I’m going to visit Matt and Mel in Little Rock AR. for New Years.  Being that it’s 2:30 New Years eve, and I still have to pack and get on the road for a 5 hour drive . . . I had better get going !

Happy New Year everyone ! 

I set up my 360 at moms house today so that I could do some relaxing while everyone else cleaned or cooked or did whatever it is that they wanted to do. 

 I got everything set up and then looked to see where I had set the controller . . .

Aparently I set it down in Tennessee while I was packing.

 And as stupid as that sounds . . . there is nothing, NOTHING, I dispize more then being somewhere with nothing to do. 

I’m trying to not let it bother me too much.  There are days that I dont even turn the 360 on at all.  But today, I want to. 

And there isn’t a store open anywhere within 60 minutes of here except Walgreens (yes, I called, no, then dont have any). 

Fortunately, I have a couple of board games in the truck . . . but they are a little more complicated then ‘normal’ board games.  NexusOps and Tickal.  Not sure Grandma and Mom will want to play them. 

Oh well, maybe I’ll go for a walk or something. 

In other news, Christmas morning was good.  We did the web cam thing with dad.  We all got stuff that we liked, and that was that.  We each got like 3 things or so . . . well I got like 6 things but three of them go together, and one of the other things was underpants.  So, all inall fun times.

Late this afternoon we had a nice Christmas Ham dinner.  Amy and Tom came over and we all exchanged gifts (I got a WalMart gift card !).  All in all, a very nice evening.  But now I have eaten just a little too much, I’m a little too sleepy, but if I go to sleep right now . . . I’ll be up at like 4 in the morning wide awake. 

So I’m blogging to pass the time.

Oh look, a James Bond movie is on TV ! 

::runs off to watch TV::

Well Mom, Grandma, and I just got back from the candle light service at Moms church (which was very nice, but the sound system was a little piercing). 

Got the wireless router set up . . . there are like 8 or 9 others in the immeadiate area . . . so getting (and staying) connected is a bit of a challenge.  But tomorrow I plan on playing some 360 (maybe some Zombie killin’ Pete !).

Also, I ordered a board game days ago . . . and I think that it shipped yesterday . . . Fedex is a little unclear on that.  But it may not get to my house until the 31st . . . which is the day that I should be leaving to head to Mat and Mells.  So hopefully it’ll show up in the morning . . . as I am leaving in the early afternoon. 

Signing off for now, have a happy Christmas everyone !

I’m here at the Horizion gas stop at the intersetcion of Hwy 46 and I-40.  There’s a BackYard Burger here.  They just opened (as it’s 10am).  I stopped for gas . . . and decided to get lunch out of the way.  Since I dont like to stop once I get on the road (I think this is a guy thing). 

Where am I going ?  I’m heading down to Georgia to see Mom and Amy and Tom (Amy’s guy) and Grand-ma-ma for Christmas.  Dad is staying at his house (as he is still recovering from his procedure), but we’re going to have a web cam Christmas that morning. 

 The guy from BackYard Burger just gave me a card for a free combo . . . since it’s Christmas and we’ve been waiting for 8 minutes now lol.  That’s cool.

Anywho, I left my driving mix CD in my office (always got to forget something on a road trip right ?), but I have my MP3 player with Major Nelsons latest pod cast on it . . . so that’ll knock off 2 of the 5 hours that I’ll be driving. 

Next on the list is a quick stop at the mall to get a gift card (hopefully quick is less then 45 minutes lol), and then just on to Moms house. 

Burger is here, and it’s time to hit the road.  It’s so cool that so many gas stations have free wireless now !

Once again I find my self waiting for Big Blue to Defrag to the point where I can actually do some audio editing . . . which means it’s time for a link dump ! 

 If this story is true, it’ll make me kind of angry.  I know we’re in a fiscal crunch, but so many discoveries come from just looking (and not looking for something specific).  Apparetnly President Elect Obama wants to cut the NASA budget . . . a lot . . . and use rockets that my Grandfather worked on to cary payloads (one way) . . . HERE  It’s true, my Grandfather worked on the Titan missles. 

 Ya know, if it were a Christian based work place in this story . . . there would be people all over the media screaming about it.  I dont think that any religion should be pushed at work (unless, as in my case, you work for a religious orgnization lol).  Sure, you can share your faith with people in conversations, but requireing anyone to attent any kind of religious ceremony is taking it too far.  Read more about Scientology in the workplace HERE. 

 So, reading this stroy . . . I’m not sure if that means that XP’s life has been extended only for low cost notebooks . . . or for everyone . . . read HERE. 

Here is a cool looking (well, sounding, well . . . what I read about it was cool) card game spoofing D&D . . . HERE

Here is another interesting game . . . HERE  . . . I might get this one and try it out on The1Shagg or DoctorJones4Ever and his wife some time.

I hate to tell anyone this, but I check this site out often to find strange board games to play . . . HERE

Large Crowds put me off.

I mean, just if I don’t have anything to do.  If I’m suppose to ‘mingle’.

What do you talk about ?  I don’t get small talk, I just don’t. 

Is anyone else like this ?

It’s the church wide Christmas party tonight.  I started some Christmas music, got a mic working for Pastor, and now I’m sitting in the sound booth waiting for this thing to be over. 

I occasionally go down and talk to a few people in the crowd that I know . . . then I come back up here. 

I just don’t care about what your child spat up this morning, or how the Colts are doing this season, and I certainly don’t want to try and figure out what’s wrong with your printer by you describing things to me that just don’t make sense (you don’t need to oil your printer, Windows didn’t tell you to do that, so please stop saying that it did). 

Does anyone else feel ridiculously  uncomfortable in situations where you have to mingle by your self in a crowd of people and make small talk ?

But there are good times too.  I had a good talk with Mr. Eddie Owens (he’s like my assistant in the A-v dept. . . he does pretty much anything that needs to be done).  He gave me a Christmas stocking with an ornament in it with his picture and a recorded message.  Very nice !

Many of my friends are here, and I’ve been talking with them. 

It’s just making the small talk that . . . I dunno . . . I just don’t get it.  I cant do it well.  And it drives me crazy when I have to.

In other news, I’ve been playing Left 4 Dead with DoctorK and The1Shagg lately (each in separate games) and it’s been great fun !  We need to all get together and play !  I also haven’t tried verses mode (where you play as the zombies against, I assume, human players as the humans in the game).  When I first got the game, I thought that $60 was a bit high.  The game was uncomplicated, simple, with very little depth as far as the story goes.  You’re 4 humans escaping from 4 different locations (4 different movies as it were).  But it’s so very much fun in it’s arcade like simplicity.  You work together to stay alive . . . you truly have to work together to stay alive . . . and I think that is the best part of  the game. 

Now I’m going to try and slip out with out anyone noticing me. 

I’ve gotten a new book to read.  I got it at the staff Christmas Party.  It’s actually two good books in one.  It’s John Maxwell’s ‘Developing the Leader within You’ and ‘Developing the Leaders Around You’.  I’m also looking at a book called ‘Me to We: A Pastors Discovery of the Power of Partnership’ . . . and when I say I’m looking at it . . . I actually mean that I have permission to use church funds to buy it (all of $13.59 plus shipping).  So I decided that I’d keep some online notes as I read them. 

Also, I’ve started using Twitter.  Pete has pointed me to Twhirl . . . a utility that allows you to update your Twitter account, as well as see other twitter feeds.  I’m about to install it and see if I like it.

 In other news, Wil Wheaton has a blog.  Not that most people didn’t know that, but it’s actually a pretty good one.  It’s rated PG-13, some little bit of harsh language in there, but full of good stuff.  Who is Wil Wheaton you ask ?  Well he was Wesley Crusher on Star Trek : The Next Generation.  But he has actually made quite a name for himself as tech guru.  He writes some good stuff over there.  Check it out.  HERE

It’s been a while since I posted any pictures.  This is mostly due to the fact that I have to format the pictures, save a smaller version (to display on the page for you to click on), and then upload the whole mess over a slow connection.  And lately, there hasn’t been much time for picture taking. 

But lately the business has been limited to small crisis’s.  Little things like getting ready for the staff Christmas party,  or cleaning up my office and getting rid of old computer parts, or . . . you know . . .  coming into work to find a server burned up (literally).  Little things like that. 

You know it’s going to be a bad morning when you open the door to the server room and our rushes 80 degree plus degree air, along with the smell or burning metal and plastic and ozone.  Yes, the magic smoke has left some of the components of the server.  However, with a new power supply the green light on the mother board lights up and we get half way through SCSI BIOS boot before it freezes !  So maybe there is hope yet for recovering at least one of the hard drives. 

Anywho, I decided to make a separate page for the pictures and such.  That way they can be a bit bigger (and I don’t have to make small versions as well as large versions and upload them both) and I can put comments with each pictures and not have to worry about the column width or anything like that.  I figured I’d do a few today, and a few more tomorrow.  I need to take some pictures of my fish too.

So, if you’re ready for a bit of load time, click the link below to proceed !

Click HERE !

Shhhh . . . dont tell everyone else that I’m doing this during Staff Meeting between topics relivent to me. 

This is an interesting story.  A guy has his 360 stolen at college and finds it with his wireless controller . . .
HERE

There is a nice cloak of Plasma around the Earth, I though we allready knew about this . . . but I guess we didn’t . . .
HERE

This is a very cool article about Fusion Power . . .
HERE

     In other news, I walked into the A-V room this morning to the smell of burning . . . which is never a good smell when walking into the room that holds a network server.  Someone has set the AC unit to heat and turned it up . . . not knowing that the unit was going to heat my office and the A-V room to temps above 83 deg F. and cause a server to overheat.  The thermostat is labeled with a dont adjust sign, but people dont seam to read those things.  I have to tell the Pastor that we’re out a server (at least the processor, maybe the whole main board) and that we need to get a digital thermostat that we can lock people out of so that the other server in my Office dosent fry. 

     The server (RILIEN) was the DHCP server (as well as an Active Directory Server, and a File Server) and I had just moved the FSMO roles to that server (there are a few things that  . . . so now I get to set the network back up after staff meeting.  Funny thing is, I just made RILIEN the ‘master server’ (if you will) because HEBION (another server) is having bad blocks show up every day.  We have a third server (RANDIR) is now taking over the DHCP roles, and I have to read up on how to put the network back together.

     Well we didn’t get sequestered this Monday either.  We sat through several cases as they came before the Judge: a few people in chains came up to ask for lower bond, a couple of people pleading guilty to possession (with intend to sell I believe) of a schedule 2 drug, and one guy with a walker and IV tubes hanging out of him was pleading guilty to the same charge, and one very VERY tall young man (maybe 18 or 19) pled guilty to possession of marijuana (over one ounce I think), as well as a few other people coming forward.  In fact, everyone that came before the Judge that morning plead guilty in exchange for probation. 

     The Judge asked all of them several questions before accepting their plead of guilty (did they understand that they had the right to a trial by jury, did they talk with their lawyers beforehand about this, did they understand that violating even one rule of their probation just once meant that they went to jail, etc.).  They all said they understood and wanted to ender the plea of guilty in exchange for probation (which the Judge granted for all of them).   Then the lawyers for the case that required a sequestered jury came forward. 

     By this time, I was sure that I was going to get picked for jury duty.  I realized that my shirt tails weren’t tucked in (which the Judge admonished a defendant for earlier, making him leave the court room and reenter with his shirt tucked in).  So, while sitting on the front row, I tried to tuck my shirt in with out being noticed by the Judge.  Then the lawyers asked to approach the bench and began talking with the Judge.  After a few minutes they returned back to their desks and the Judge announced that, due to some new evidence just being submitted, the trial was pushed back to February so that the other side had time for Discovery (Discovery being the time given for both sides to see all the evidence being presented, not the TV channel with whales on it).  And with that, the Judge dismissed us. 

     We were reminded to call back Monday night and Tuesday night after 5 to check the ‘Jury Machine’ to see if we were going to be needed (we weren’t needed today). 

     And as stupid as it sounds, I was actually looking forward to serving on a jury.  Maybe not a sequestered one, but I think it would be a good experience to serve on a jury.  You hear all these horror stories about people having to serve (mostly due to work interruptions), but I want to experience it myself.  Plus, as corny as it sounds, it’s our civic duty to serve in that manner.  I dunno, I just want to do it.  Maybe Wednesday we’ll get called to do something and I’ll get picked. 

     In other news, the kids play went incredibly well.  None of the microphones stopped working, all the lighting worked well (including the spotlights), only a few lines were bungles (but no one noticed), and everyone loved seeing their kids up on the stage singing and dancing lol. 

     My dad went in for a minor surgery this morning.  He’s out of the operating room now and in the recovery room. I’m going to pick him up at 11 from the hospital to take him home.  So that went well.

     I returned the rental spotlights back to Bradfield yesterday.  On the way back home, I stopped at PetCo in Bellevue and found some fish that had been returned (for being too aggressive with the owners other fish).  They had been back for a week or so and didn’t have any sign of sickness.  I also met an old College friend of mine who was working at the store now.  We were in the Fantasy Literature class together (I think it was that class at least).  But he offered me his store discount on the fish if I could take them.  Since my tank is full of already aggressive fish, they should do fine (you just have a problem with aggressive and passive fish being together).  The fish were all impairs: a couple of red finned sharks (basically sleek looking algie eaters with red fins, I don’t think they are actually ‘sharks’), a couple of sliver finned sharks (larger then the red fins, but with short whiskers like cat fish), and two catfish of some kind (with long whiskers).  All were three or four inches with an adult size of less then 6 inches. 

     Also, mom is in Nashville for a nursing meeting for the week.  Hopefully Thursday evening we’ll get together with dad and do something. 

      So all in all, it’s been a busy but wonderful few days.  Plus it’s raining today, and I love the rain . . . so relaxing.  I’ve actually had time to relax a bit today and recover from the busy past week.  Tomorrow after service we move all the instruments back on stage and Thursday I’ll hook everything back up and make sure it works. 

     That is all.  You may continue about your day.