Ryan was 2 yesterday; pretty amazing to think that it's only been 2 years, and so much has happened with him. It doesn't seem that long ago that he was 100% dependent on Katie and I for entertainment, food, clothing, etc... But now, at 2, he's completely able to entertain himself - we can leave him alone while we go to cook or take showers or something, and he's ok playing with his toys or watching a movie. He can feed himself pretty much anything, he can make decisions on what he'd prefer to eat, and even get it himself if it's on a low shelf in the pantry (this isn't a good thing). He talks up a storm, but goodness knows what he's talking about a lot of the time, but when he really wants you to know what he's saying, he usually knows the right word to get you on the right track, or at the very least can do the 'I'll take you to it and show you' pull on your hands....

It's been a really amazing last 2 years; and it'll only be more amazing as time goes on...


We took Ryan to see Sesame Street Live: Elmo's Green Thumb yesterday at Philips Arena. Parked right at the arena, so we didn't have to walk anywhere, and parking was cheap enough... We had really pretty darn good seats too; as good as the ones that were twice as expensive, I'd say. Though, the way it was setup, I'm not sure there were ANY seats that weren't great in there.
We went to the 10:30a show, figuring that traffic would be easier, and since we were having his party on Saturday, we just thought it would be a nice 'on your birthday' treat. He was utterly transfixed the whole time. We were worried that we'd be too far, and Ryan wouldn't be able to see well, and he'd get bored and whine and cry -- not a bit! He kept up with where everyone was at all times, and danced with the music, and made sure to identify all the characters for us. "Big Bird", "Abbie", "Bert", "Elmo"! He'd occationally want to know "Where'd Abbie Go?" or "Where's Big Bird?" - it was such a hoot.

Took him to Applebee's for lunch, so he could effectively have ice cream and cookies for lunch, since he didn't want his chicken fingers after all... Got his haircut at Pigtails and Crewcuts again, and they did a great job again.

After all that, it was naptime, which turned into "I'm going to play with my new truck in the bed for 2 hours and not actually nap" time... Then we did the rest of his presents, dinner - Pizza - he loves pizza, and cake, which made him uber-hyper, and then played with him new trainset for the rest of the evening while Katie baked, iced, and decorated Ryan's party cake. It's a Giant 3-D Lightning McQueen cake, and Ry's pretty excited about it.

Leads us to today - we're hoping that it doesn't pour this afternoon for Ryan's party, if it does - we're in a pavilion, but I still don't want my friends or family soaked getting in and out of there.    We didn't invite many people, just a few friends, their kids, and our families - so I think there'll be plenty of room to stay dry.

Rant - I know when I was younger that I wasn't very good at RSVPing for everything. But now that I'm older, married, and in-general more responsible, I try harder. Why exactly certain parts of my family cannot manage a simple invitation/rsvp response system, I have no idea. My mom ended up being the one to tell me two nights ago which of my Aunts and Cousins were/weren't coming, because they opted to call HER and tell her, instead of calling me directly. Because my number is on the invitation.

Then again, these are the same relatives that never invite us over - they just tell my mom to invite us. Unfortunately, it always ends up like an afterthought (because it's the day of or a day before) that we ever hear about it, so it's just weird to us to show up.   To me, it's acceptable to say "bring your kids" when said kids live in the same house.  But when your kids are nearly 30, married and have children, invite them your damn self and RSVP directly!
End Rant

Tags: family, ryan

Katie, Ryan and I went down to Panama City/Seagrove for the Labor Day weekend to stay with my mom ('Mimi'), sister ('Antie') and her boyfriend, Nick. Got down there pretty late on Friday, since I had to work, but it gave us 2 whole days at the beach. It was really pretty nice, we stayed in a 3bed/3bath condo about 5-10 minutes walk from the beach that was really really nice - everyone pretty much had their own space, though Ryan pretty much needs his own room since he won't sleep in a room with anyone, so he got to sleep in the bunk beds in one room (with his new bedrails), and he seemed to really enjoy that. Mom and Amanda are beach bums, so Katie was in good company and got to do what she really likes when at the beach -- sitting on the beach all day. We went down in the morning on Saturday, stayed until Ryan's naptime, had lunch and then put him down. Ate at Boon Docks for dinner on Saturday. Bonn Docks is a local seafood hole in the wall, that happens to be on the water under the bridge into the PCB area. The food was really excellent, and not too expensive, compared to eating at Red Lobster or something...

Sunday we spent the morning at the pool, then went down to the beach for a few hours, and then came back for naptime. Went to Margaritaville for dinner, which we decided we needed to do, since we avoid the crows there like the plague when we go to Myrtle Beach (there's no restaurant I want to eat at bad enough to wait 2-3 hours to eat at), but the wait was only quoted at an hour on Sunday, so we waited it out by giving Jimmy some money in the gift shop. The food was actually really good, and not too expensive, which I was surprised about. Evidently before the playing of 'Margaritaville' or at the end of 'Jamaica Mistaka' , not sure which - they fire cannons, and have a pirate and his wenches (on stilts) come out to lead the diners in the singing of Margaritaville. Fun, sure. The cannons combined with really tall people scared the crap out of Ryan, and he required sitting in my lap for the duration of dinner. To make things better (before they got worse, then better again) the tall pirate-man came over making balloon animals. He talked to Ryan and made him a monkey. During dinner, the monkey spontaneously popped - which sent tears of distress/surprise ringing out across the restaurant, fortunately Pirate man came running back to make a new orange puppy dog for Ryan. He carried that puppy around ALL NIGHT, "Orange paa-paa". Even wanted to sleep with it... After dinner it started to storm, which killed our chances for a night walk on the beach, but we still had a good time; we just went home so Ryan could play with Mimi.

We all had an awesome weekend, Ryan really enjoyed having all the attention from Antie Amanda, Nick ('Nyuck') and his Mimi.

Though -- we didn't consider the commute home... It took ~7 hour to get down there, which is normal... But it took over 11 hours to get home!
Evidently, since checkout time is 11am everywhere, and tehre are really only 2 ways out of PCB, and neither of them are 11 lanes of expressway, traffic was retarded. It took us about 2 hours to get the 17 miles out of PCB out to Defuniak Springs and the highway. Then we got to hit bumper to bumper in every damn town we hit on the way home. We bailed from the expressway in Newnan and took backroads back to our house, and got home a little after 11 last night. Mom and Amanda left a couple of hours later, and got home around the same time as us. So the key is either to leave BEFORE 9am, or after 2pm, or you'll be in crazy retarded traffic...

Tags: family, ryan, vacation

Took Ryan to his first Braves Game today with Nick and Rachel. He had his company tickets, and was nice enough to invite us to join them.

I didn't know you could bring in kids without a ticket if they sit in your lap! That's NICE! We had 4 tickets, and 7 of us came in. Ryan and Angie had a great time hanging out and cheering/clapping as the Braves beat the Marlins 7-5 to take 2/3 games with them this week.

Lots of fun today; need to go see the Braves more often.

Tags: family, ryan

Last Thursday bright and early we took Ryan over to spend the day with my Dad, who hasn't really ever had the opportunity to have Ryan on his own for a lot of quality one-on-one time. We loaded his car seat up into his car for the day, and off we went to go do adult things without The Boy. Dad took Ryan to the Yellow River Game Ranch, to visit/pet some animals, and then had lunch, went to the park, and just generally had a great time. Ryan slept like a log Thursday night.

Katie and I decided that we were going to go car shopping. We finally paid off the Camry a week or so ago, and have decided that we need to replace the aging Escort that has no a/c. After looking at lots of vehicles at CarMax, I finally had an idea of what I wanted. Decided I really wanted something with a 6cyl engine, and that would be reliable for my goal to keep the car of at least 8 years. Meaning it needed to be pretty, fun, and reasonably practical, and reasonably fuel efficient. It really came down to either an 04-06 Maxima, or an 06-07 Honda Accord Coupe.

After a little more shopping around, I was still really tosssed on Maxima vs Accord, when we found the perfect car. After test driving an 06 Accord EXL V6-6 speed, I was hooked. Managed to get them to a price I was happy with, and spent the rest of the damn day doing paperwork. The mileage was a little higher but the 6-6 is somewhat rare (at time of buying there were 43 EXL 6-6's nationwide on Autotrader, vs 260 EXL Auto's), so I took it as I found it, in a really pretty Silver, with Black Leather interior. Goodness, it's so much FUN to drive!

I haven't taken any pix of my own yet, but here's a few that I saved from the dealer listing (Can't really see the black pinstripe in these photos, but I had that taken off):


( Couple more photos, and a few details behind here... )

And yes, we DID have an adult dinner out, had some fun hanging out. Went to visit my mom after dinner, show her the car, and then picked Ryan up around 8 or so. Right before we left Uncle Steve's house, Ryan fell and hit his face on the edge of their coffee table, and has a nice bruise on the bridge of his nose and under one eye now, but nothing else. Poor baby!

Tags: family, ryan

Dad's in town this week for a visit with family and a Santa class. Had dinner with him, Amanda, Nick, Uncle Steve, Aunt Jane and Grandmother -- Ryan's just about got "granddad" and "G.G" (Great Grandmother), but not quite.

Dad's coming to our house this afternoon to visit and have dinner again; and then we'll be letting dad take him out all day on Thursday for some one-on-one time.



Had CoolRay come check my a/c at the house and clean it/recharge it, since we've noticed that our electricity usage is quite a lot higher than last year at this time. He found it to be dirty, and about a pound low on freon, probably because of a cap that was missing somewhere. Fixed all that, recharged it, and now we'll see how energy usage goes. I just have no idea what else we have added to the house to use so much extra energy this year...

My new/reallocated UPS estimates that I have 209 minutes of battery-time for my AP, Router/Firewall, 2 small servers, my RAID server, Cable Modem, main switch and Phone ATA. So, in theory, we can surf the web via WiFi with the power out longer than our laptop batteries will last :)

Tags: family, fix it, geek

Katie and her mom went to see a movie on Saturday and do some shopping, while I hung out at home with The Boy. I worked on getting my laptop up and running OSX (project x86), but never got it to completely install, and after several hours I gave up. Might have worked better with a newer laptop maybe, I'm not sure if I had the right drivers or patches, and information on the project is pretty sketchy, due to all the different computer configurations there are out there...

I installed my newly acquired 3000VA UPS and Battery Pack that I got from a decommissioning at the office.   It was about 2 years old, and the batteries should be good for 3-5 years, so it's perfectly overkill for holding up my fileserver, and all my network gear that I keep down in the basement.   I hope I never have to move it again, the combined weight of the 2 parts is ~200lbs.

Ryan's decided that he's comfortable getting himself out of bed now.   He knows that he can get in and out on his own, that's not new, but he's always just sat in bed and waited for one of us to go get him out.   This weekend, when i heard him stirring I just called out to him from our bedroom -- he hopped out of bed, came out of his room, closed the door behind him - and came to see us.    Same after his nap on Sunday.   So, he's currently still waiting to be /invited/ out, but more than happy to come out on his own.   It's hard for me to believe he's not even two, and already really acts just like a normal person, doing so many of the things big people do...

On Sunday, we noticed after church that Ryan wasn't saying "GiGi" when referring to his friend Angie -- he actually had "Angie" down. They walked out of church hand in hand, between Rachel and myself. We didn't get a picture, but it was really cute.

My Mom and sister came over in the afternoon to visit. Ryan belted out another surprise calling Amanda "Auntie" (very clearly) - so she was super excited about that. "Grammy" doesn't seem to agree with him, so we're working on "MiMi" which is working better.

We went out to dinner, and they left around 9:30. So we watched Coraline after they left.
That's a pretty freaking weird movie, but we really liked it. It was a little creepy to watch right before bed, but we survived the night.

Tags: family, geek, ryan

Jeez, June seems to have been a bad month for celebrities:
RIP...
June 28 - Billy Mays
June 25 - Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson (Guess Farrah's family is pretty ticked...)
June 23 - Ed McMahon
June 3 - David Carradine
There are a couple of other notables, but I think those were the really high profile ones...

We finally went and got my grill on Saturday, and then it decided it was going to rain. And then didn't. But we'd already gotten it all packed away for a storm... We also decided that we needed a patio set (We've only been in our house four years next month) - so we started looking around for something inexpensive - or preferably cheap, even. There was a /really/ cheap ($100) set of 4 chairs and a table at walmart, but it was sold out. Just as well - the chairs were only rated for 200lbs - which excluded me, so it probably wouldn't have ended up pretty.
We found a really nice set at -- Kroger -- last night.  Who'd have figured. Kroger's got all their outdoor furniture for 40% off right now, so we found a pretty neat set of swively chairs with a metal table for four - that didn't have one of those glass tops that makes me worry... It's got ceramic tiles inserted into the top which are replacable with any standard tiles if they break or whatever, and apart from the chairs' semi-old lady pattern, the whole set without an umbrella was only about 200 bucks. The umbrella stand was only an additional $15, so we got that too. Now we need an umbrella... So, once we have the table built - we'll officially have a full deck set.

Katie and Ryan have been mildly sick this weekend, so we just took it easy (aside from carrying around grils and patio furniture) so that they could rest.

Tags: family, news

Back from Myrtle Beach on Sunday night around 8pm.   Its funny how you're exhausted after vacation - but we had a really good time.
A couple Quick statistics:
Number of days/nights in MB: 5/6 (in at Dinnertime on Monday, left after lunch on Sunday)
Number of trips to Friendly's: 5 (3 meals trips (with ice cream) and 2 dedicated ice cream trips) - we had Ben and Jerry's one night.

Yes, we got Ryan his Conehead sunday on Monday night after dinner, and then we had dinner there with Brian and Amanda and her whole family on Wednesday after B&A arrived in town.   Ryan got the Monster Mash (is that right?) that night.   Lots of assorted ice cream scattered throughout the week.

Took Ryan to Ripley's Aquiarium on Friday - he's still too little to REALLY appreciate it - but he got a huge thrill out of the reef tank where all the fish from Finding Nemo reside.   He saw the clownfish and said "Nemo!", then we picked out Dory, Deb, Gill and Bubbles (I had to resort to asking for some help with some of the names from some little girls that were also talking about Nemo near that tank), but Ryan did get a huge kick out of seeing all the fish "Fish, Star!, Where's Nemo?".   He wouldn't let us carry him, he just got angry and frustrated, and got super freaked out getting too close to the tank glass, but it was a fun time either way.   Expensive, but it was worth it I think.   We went with Brian and Amanda, and her nephew Will, who's 8 or 9.   I think it was neat for him, he seemed to have a good time.   Ate Tony Roma's @ Broadway on the Beach that night since we were over there - yummy.   Hung out @ BotB and walked around after dinner, got Ben and Jerry's, watched them make fudge, bought fudge, and then left.

Only got to eat Seafood one night, but we went to one of the popular all you can eat deals that had lots of fresh stuff.   Katie ate Snow Crab legs for the first time (I think she got our money's worth out of those alone :) ) - and I ate Fried Frogs Legs for the first time.

Frog legs...   The cliche is that is tastes like chicken.   And -- well, I really can't think of anything else to compare the taste to, but the texture and tastes are very similar.   Katie wouldn't try it, and wouldn't let me let Ryan try it.   he wasn't happy eating anything but peas anyway - good thing his buffet was free.

We spent a fair amount of time on the beach and at the pools.   Ryan LOVES the beach and the ocean, as long as he's not getting splashed, or being pulled off his feet by the receding waves.   He's good with standing at the waves edge, and he's good with wading in a little, but the waves were rouch, and splashed a lot - so, that kept him out of the water mostly.

We taught him to make stuff in the sand, but mostly he just wanted to fill buckets with sand and dump the water around our site.   But - he had a really good time.   

We need to take him swimming more though, he really had a good time at the pool, and even more in the kiddie pools since he could walk around and visit the other kids.   he's NOT a fan of all the splashing sprinklers and waterfall mushrooms that were in some of the pools, (it's just splashing water again - he doesn't like it unless HE'S the one doing the splashing) so we were limited to just a couple of the kiddie pools at the resort.

Being at the beach with a toddler is kinda rough.   You want to spend more time outside or at the beach, but naptimes in the middle of the day put a damper on that.   Course, it didn't help that we kept him up until 10 or 11 each night, which consequently lead to us sleeping in til at least 9 each day (and then an hour of beach prep to put sunscreen on us and him before going out - coupled with breakfast) meant that we didn't actually get to the beach or the pool or whatever until around 11.   Naptime at 1 or 2 - then dinner afterwards.    Hopefully next year we won't be napping quite so much, and can be a little more flexible so we can spend more time outdoors.

We bought Scrabble to play while we had downtime, and sofar, I have yet to beat Katie at all.   I got close once, but still lost by about 30 points.

We officially confused Ryan's vocabulary too.   He can say "Beach" like a pro -- it's definitely the clearest word he can say - not to insinuate that other words aren't clear, but it's got a couple of harder sounds together that he hadn't done before.   So - when we got there, we tried to teach him what the Beach was - so, we can point outside and say "What's that?" and he'll say "Pool!" or "Beach!" -- it took a little while to teach him the difference, but we managed.   little did we know that while he was identifying the object "Pool" as a pool, he was equating "Beach" with what we refer to as "outside".   We didn't realize this until we got home, and he stands in the back door saying "Go Beach" and pointing into the backyard...   Cute.

We pretty much threw the diet out the window.   Full on caffeine sodas, and a terrible diet of fried food and ice cream.  
Weigh In on Monday morning: 221.  So, between Sioux Falls and Myrtle Beach, I gained 6 lbs back.   probably not as bad as it could be, but I definitely need to get back on track.

Oh, and Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback were yummy (too bad that the production cycle was only 3 months, and I didn't find out about it until the last week - it made it hard to locate them in stores).   It's amazing the difference that REAL sugar makes in a soda, vs HFCS.   It just doesn't leave that fuzzy taste behind.    It's back to No caffeine diet sodas now that I'm home though.

Tags: family, ryan, vacation

Day 19 Weigh in: 215

I ordered a portable DVD player and a seat-back mounting bag this week, for the trip to MB to keep Ryan entertained.   Both were about $120, and it plays DivX/Xvid off of USB and SD Cards.   It conveniently accepts SDHC, so I plan on loading movies on an 8GB card (no toting/breaking my DVD collection - and since it doesn't play BluRay, I'd have to find a DVD of 'Cars' anyway), and that should keep Ryan happy.   I'm pretty surprised about the quality -- it's just a cheap GPX brand device, but I figure I won't be too grumpy when Ryan pours juice in it, vs spending 3x as much on a really nice one (those don't do divx though).   however, it IS pretty nice!   The screen could be higher resolution, but it's by no stretch a BAD picture.

Off Day yesterday -
Woke up yesterday and got new tires on the Camry.   Now it drives smooth, so I just need to get the brakes services so it stops smooth too.

FINALLY got the lawn mowed - front and back.   Still need to wead eat and pull other weeds from around the gardens, but at least the grass isn't 2' tall anymore in some places.   Lack of a mower for over 2 weeks, and 2 weeks of rain are a bad combo.

Katie's getting set to stay alone here while I'm in Sioux Falls this week, so since Amanda and Brian invited her to stay with them for the week, we had to find out how our dogs interacted.   The general plan is that Katie wants to stay here, but if she gets too freaked out, she's going to go there, and take Ryan and Lexi -- the cats will be fine alone for a few days.
So we went over to hang out / dinner with them last night.   Bella, predictably, wanted to be the Alpha dog, and Lexi, predictably, just wanted to chill and play.   Bella asserted her dominance, Lexi cowered and generally was just like "wtf, settle down, ok, I'm going over here now - just stop your bitching".   After a while, they learned to coexist, but really not interact at all -- so, they'll be fine, but maybe not best friends.
We decided that we'd been /generally/ good at our diets for the last 18 days, and decided to have an all-out cheat night.   Taco Mac it was.   Queso, Chips, Wings, Fries, and Sandwiches.   Sat outside since its a) quieter than inside, and b) it was a beautiful day - if a bit windy and cool.

Tags: family, geek, lawn, sbd

Went to the doc yesterday about my bites/allergy or whatever.   Though; it had basically stopped happening by yesterday morning.   Doc says it's hives (weird, I've never had that before) not bites.   So, gave me some meds and told me to be on the alert for allergens.   Yay.

The lawnmower needs a new battery, dang it.  Going to autozone on the way home so I can FINALLY get my grass cut, it's too rediculous right now.

I think I need a higher gain splitter on my cable to the bedroom, because the cable modem hasn't been stable since I split off to the bedroom - so I'll try one GOOD splitter before I come have Comcast sort out the nonsense that is my lack of ability to split cable.  So, the cable's back out of the bedroom for the time being.

We went out to Lawerenceville last night to watch my youngest Burns cousins (Laura and Stephanie) graduate from high school.   That officially means that there are no Burns kids in the Gwinnett county system anymore.   I always forget how small Central Gwinnett is - they only had about 450 kids graduating, compared with the nearly 1000 in mine.   The whole affair took only an hour, and then we went to visit with everyone at their house for a little while.   My other cousins Rich and Shona were there too - as they're in town for the graduation, but then off for other destinations in life - Rich is moving to England next week.   I'd like to travel at some point, but not sure I'd want to live overseas.   Best of luck to all of them in the next leg of their lives.

We got home around midnight, and we ALL pretty much crashed -- Ryan being mister energy won't sleep in the car anymore.  He just sat in the back babbling and imping for the while 90 minute ride.   We're totally going to have to find a cheap car DVD player for the trip to MB; I think Katie will slay someone if he carries on like that for 6+ hours.   It's cute for a little while, but then he just gets impy and grumpy, and then it's not so cute.


Oh, and I bought a Logitech Bluetooth to IR converter for my PS3 - so now at long last I can retire the last "extra" remote from my entertainment center and command it all from my Harmony!   Screw those custom solution guys with their $150 solutions.   Maybe I should invest in Logitech, I seem to have enough of their stuff.

Tags: family, geek, health, ryan

Last Week started out rough - I didn't get my BP meds filled until about Tuesday, so I'd been out for a few days - and I THINK it was causing me to have chronic headaches until I got it filled. Or maybe it was psychosomatic or something.   Got those filled, and now I feed normal again.  Whatever.

We got the Camry back, it looks really good.  There are a couple of nit-picky things I want to take it back to Bradly about, hopefully I cna do that in the next few days.

LodgeNet stock has gone up nearly 300% in the last week (making that 367% since I bought last year), thanks to positive first quarter earnings, so - I'm trying to decide if I want to pull my money back out now, or roll the dice to see if it goes up more.   Wish I'd have had more money to spend buying in last year - but oh well.

Dad was in town on Thursday to visit with family and Amanda before her tonsil surgery on Friday morning; he was bearing good news for us.

He'll be Santa at Northlake Mall (Tucker) this year (pending contract finalization) which is pretty cool - it means he'll be in Atlanta for Christmas.  Last year he was at a mall in Memphis - he really enjoyed being Santa, but really wanted to get a position in Atlanta, but none were abailable for his rookie year.   So, he's pretty excited that this slot opened up this year.
Santa's hours are pretty rough, he works from Mid November until Christmas Eve, with /only/ Thanksgiving day off.   So, he's basically there from a bit after the mall opens, until right around closing - every single day that the mall is open.   Last year we celebrated Christmas with him the weekend after, since he was travellling from Memphis to ATL on Christmas day.
So, we'll actually be able to take Ryan to Santa, and he'll very likely not have the 2-year-old fit in Santa's lap (we hope).

Amanda's tonsil surgery went well, short and smooth and she's recovering well now - we went to visit on Saturday morning.

We had Date Night last night, Ellen babysat Ryan while Katie and I went to Ted's Montana with a $25 off $50 order (thanks 70% off restraunts.com coupon that cost $3).  While it didn't make our bill less than it probably would have been without a coupon, we ordered things that we wouldn't normally have.  we got their super yummy Onion rings as an app, Katie got Beef Fillet steak, and I got Bison Ribs, plus a dessert, it hit $54, so we got our coupon to discount it.   Bison ribs are really good, but the portion is pretty small - you can get a full rack of pork ribs for that price anywhere eise, vs the 8oz portion of Bison at Ted's -- but they were REALLY good.   I don't know if I'd get them again just because they're so expensive for such a small portion, but we were both super stuffed after the app and dessert with our meals.
Then we went to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine -- which we both loved.   

There are another 10 movies or so coming out this summer that we want to see in the theaters; hopefully we'll actually get to some of them.  I need to lay that schedule out for my calendar.

Ryan's getting to be more and more of a ham, doing summersaults and doing this wierd rolling twist flip deal on our bed that just makes him laugh like a madman.   He's also started climbing himself in and out of his booster at the dinner table -- jeez :)   He's getting so big so fast!

Finally caught up on BBC's Robin Hood; so now I'm waiting for the weekly episodes.   Watched the last laft of the new Knight Rider series -- which I didn't really think was a /terrible/ series, and was entertaining for the first dozen or so episodes, but they basically rebooted the series at about the 13th (of 17) episode, and completely lost me.   I watched it out, but I think I agree at this point that this series needs to die.

In Books:  The new Sookie book comes out this week - yay!  I'll have to go pick that up.   I'm read through Ruth in the Old Testament, and just starting 1 Samuel.

Tags: books, date night, family, movies, ryan

Not a lot going on this week.   Ryan's on antibiotics for his strep and ear infection for a few more days.   Katie went to the doc on Thursday, and got a negative strep screening, despite a sore throat.   Now I'm getting the sore throat, but only at night and early in the morning.   Lots of juice and Emergen'C for me to try and knock out whatever's in there.

Work was kinda crazy this week, our facilities director was down cleaning up the call center building and preparing it to be closed down and start showing to sublease tenants.   The amount of crap that was in there was amazing.   Looks like we're going to give away a lot of old computers to employees, and (thank goodness) she's going to have professional movers come pack up and move the 60 some odd other computers that are going up to the corporate office.   Now begins the process of documenting all of the stuff that I'm going to have trashed/destroyed, and the stuff to be donated so we can write it all off the books.   There should be some cool stuff that I might be able to get from there.

I'm feeling tense at work - I hate not knowing what the future is of my office.   People have made comments that they don't expect my office to stay open past the end of the year, but at the same time, they've filled up every cube, corner, and office with bodies.   There's even a closet that's now an office...    Either way, I've got my resume out there a small handful of places, but I'm just not comfortable with the resume itself.   I need to get Katie or someone to make it pretty and stuff; I've never been good at making a resume.   Of course, the other possibility is that I DO find another job, and then they lay people off...   I guess you can't really live for what 'might' happen, eh?   Live for today?  ...

I've finally decided to build my RAID 5 server, since I realize that I pretty much have everything I need already, just missing a couple of things. So, I'll be rounding that stuff up soon, and I'll have to reformat my hodgepodge server from XP to 2003, and then move the data off the various drives in it over to the new array.

Also decided to take another shot at using Linux.   I've setup Ubuntu 8.10 on my personal laptop, and everything including wireless works out of the box.   I've been using that for a couple of days now, and am liking it a lot - it's giving me a chance to brush up on my Linux skill (which was limited to CLI only, and very limited at that before anyway).   Thought about using that as my RAID server platform, but I'm not thinking I'll be comfortable enough for that by the time I'm ready to build.

Movie off The List:

Underworld - I guess I never get tired of Vampire movies; looking forward to watching the sequel, but - the third one?   We'll see.

Tags: family, geek, the list, work

Friday:
Since our call center is closing - and we are subleasing the facility where that lives, I no longer have that server room to use after about March. So, we're consolidating everything into the smaller, original server room from before we were bought out last February. So, this has forced me to have to move 2 400lb data cabinets (empty) from one facility, across the road, to the other. Even on wheels, that wasn't fun.

After work we went over to Brian's house to help him mount his TV on the wall.   That wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, but it still took us a little while.  After we put Ryan to bed, we played "Dirty Minds" - which is fun, but unfortunately the manufacturers of the game (like a lot of newer "Board" games) just did not build in a lot of replayability into the game.   Once you've heard the dirty clue, the answer tends to stick in your mind, so if you play again you'll know the answer.  So, once you have used up all the clues, you can't really play anymore.  You can play Monopoly forever.  It's timeless.  Dirty minds has probably - I'm guessing 200 words (divided among 4 player books).

Saturday:
Wow!   Our whole household slept until 11:30am.   I never sleep in - my internal clock wakes me up at 6 every day - which is stupid, since i have to wake up at 5 for work.  I guess it feels it's a fail safe. What's wierder is that Ryan slept in too.  Guess it was because we were out at Brian and Amanda's until after midnight - so we got home pretty late.  So, that was cool.

Went to visit Super-Lala for dinner.  Just about any dinner with my family(my mom's side) becomes a fiasco, since they cannot have a small dinner affair.  They complain about not getting to visit Ryan very often, but then create such a busy environment when we come over - that it just never works.  What was a dinner with just Katie, Ryan and I, my Mom and my sister - became also my aunts, uncles, and all of their kids.  Fortunately, one set already had plans, and didn't show up.  The other said they didn't have any plans, so they DID show up, only to tell us that they DID in fact have plans, and that they woudn't be staying.  Fine - no big deal, but if you don't want to come because you have plans - you don't need to come, nobody gets offended.  It was my cousin's 13th b-day, so they were taking her and one of her friends out to dinner, and then to a movie.   With a stop by Grandma's.  With the friend.  Wierd?

Super-Lala's house isn't really baby-friendly, Ryan managed to get two pretty good licks to his noggin while we were there.   Good thing he's hard headed like his dad :)

Knocked off The List:
Street Kings and Lethal Weapon 2

Tags: family, the list, work

My grandpa passed away this morning -- we all knew it was coming, as he's been plagued by very advanced cancer for nearly two years.   His health has been deteriorating rapidly for the last 12 months mostly -- he wasn't even able to make it to my wedding last August.

He's been mostly bedridden since then -- so we know he's been very uncomfortable, and in a lot of pain for that time.

I found out while I was at work today around lunchtime, and managed to maintain my composure for the rest of the day -- I guess it hasn't really sunk in.

Tonight, my entire family went to my grandma's house to keep her company.   He didn't want people moping about his death, he wanted celebration.   We sat and had a really good time visiting with some in-town relataives, had dinner and hung out.   It was exactly what he would have wanted.

I made the mistake of going into his bedroom though, and saw his empty bed for the first time in a year -- that was it...   It became real... He's really gone...

It's really hard, because we were always really close, he was my biggest supporter aside from my parents, and my number one fan, the whole time I was growing up. He stood by me, and every decision I made -- helped me learn from them, and helped me grow. Even until the last time that I saw him, which was on Fathers Day, we still discussed the good things in my life, and what was driving me forward. He was rooting for me til the end.


We're all just happy now, that he's moved on, and his pain has gone...

He will be cremated, and memorial services held some time next week, and we'll be with family over the weekend this weekend.

Tags: family