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

I just got my flight itinerary for my upcoming trip to the mothership in Sioux Falls -- I'll be leaving at the crack of dawn on June 2, and won't get back in to ATL until about 10pm.    Bunch of crap.   I know they're trying to maximize my time in the office there, but jeez - lets take the 2 crappiest flights ever.   Part of what makes it sucky as that I have to change planes in Minneapolis with an hour between flights each time.   Eh, I've never been through MSP, so that should be a new experience.   
At least I'm not going alone this time.   And then right after that is vacation!   So, I'll have a couple of days to mow the lawn and get packed, then driving off to MB on Monday morning.

Got my mower belt yesteday, not without trial.   Went to Sears, looked at the 25 belts on the wall - all of them said "see reference chart for sizing" on the package.   I couldn't find said chart - not noticing the little parts computer that was a few feet down on the wall...   So, I went seeking help.  At the employee station in the hardware section, there were 2 Sears employees standing there, talking to a customer.   One was in sales floor attire, the other in warehouse attire.  I figured he was just out of position, but still waited patiently near the other customer.   Warehouse guy's cell phone rang, he looked at me, then answered the phone and walked back toward the warehouse.   Sales guy kept talking to customer.   Customer paid for his purchases, and then they proceded to start a new conversation about lawn equipment.   I went away to seek someone else to help me.   After not finding anyone remotely near hardware, I returned to stand next to Customer.   Sales guy glanced at me a few times, but never acknowledged that I was there.   After a while, I realized that they were just shooting the shit, and he wasn't actually trying to help or sell anything to this customer.   I thought about getting a little rude and rambunctious, but then figured he would just not help me find what I needed, so I just waited.   After about 10 minutes (total), another Sales floor guy came around, was polite and helpful, found me what I needed and showed me where to find the answers next time, gave me a lot of helpful pointers about my mower's parts, and checked me out.   All the while, Sales guy #1 just kept chatting with Customer, and they conveniently broke up their conversation right as I was checking out.   Then he just stood there with his thumb in his bum like nothing else in the world was going in around him.   I held my tounge again as I walked past him to leave the store.
I really don't understand people sometimes.

My bites didn't seem to bother me yesterday at work, though they were fairly bad and swollen yesterday morning, then they got swolled and aggrivated again last night before bed.   I had originally planned to make a doc's appointment for this morning, but today when I woke up, there's no signs of them except a coupe of small spots - I figure it won't do any good to show the doctor my problem if it's not actually happening...   So, maybe it's just getting better...   I'll have to keep an eye out, and if they swell up again, try to go in to see the doc so I can show him.

Lastly, aside from needing benadryl to sleep at all last night, Ryan decided that he just wasn't going to sleep more than an hour at a time.   Katie had gone to her leadership group at church last night, so I put Ryan to bed.   At 7:45p, he broke down into tears, sobbing and squalling.  I attributed it to the lack of a nap, and decided to put him to bed.  We did Bedtime Routine without much incident, but then he went back into hysterics right as I put him in the bed.   I left, and 5 minutes later, he was out cold.  It was a little after 8.   Right at 9, he woke up sobbing inconsoleably again.   I went and tried for 15 minutes, nothing worked, so I took a break, let him yell.   Finally got him back to calm around 9:30 after an abriged "Teething medication treatment" (some Tylenol, and teething tablets) and some gas drops - right before Katie got home, and then he broke out sobbing again.   This was basically the pattern all night long, sleep for a little, sob for a long time.  I know Katie was pretty frazzled, I was too knocked out to really know a lot about what was happening, but he was loud enough to wake me up a little bit.   I think she eventually dosed him with the rest of the arsenal of teething remedies, but I don't know if it was the issue or not, but he DID seem to sleep for at least a couple of consecutive hours after that - and then my alarm went off.
Damn I -teeth, I don't know if they're the issue, but I know all 4 of his are not completely in yet, so I'll blame them for now.

Tags: health, rants, ryan, work

It rained, my grass grew - I still haven't gotten a belt for the mower yet anyway... Probably will go check with Sears today for what I need.

Friday we rented the Golden Compass, but we haven't watched it yet... Too much going on this weekend.

Saturday we basically just hung around the house and did some chores; I ran a coax to the bedroom so we could hook cable up to the TV in there. We have "Basic Cable" with our cable modem service and full on HD service with our DirecTV. Since we don't have 3 receivers for the DTV, we decided to just see what we actually get on "Basic Cable" with Comcast.

It took the TV about 30 minutes to scan all the digital and analog channels... 34 analog, and 104 digital.
104? Wow! We basically found that we get HD service on the networks (abc, nbc, cbs, fox) and we can get a poop-ton of other channels in SD (boo, no bonus HD out there). The catch is that they're bizarre channel numbers - some are like (can't remember, guessing at them) 82.100-82.120 and then they pick up again later in the channels with 101.10-101.25 or something. So, if you wnat to watch ABC family, you have to remember what channel AND decimal it's assigned to. Good for surfing, not really for finding something specific. Then, probably about 40 of those channels that it found were just "no signal" on them.

Saturday night I couldn't sleep, I got eaten up by some kind of bug(s), probably down in the basement or something, and was super itchy. I got tired of counting at about 40 bites, but then couldn't really count them because they all swole up together. So, I was a red and puffy blotchy mess... Took some benadryl, and got knocked out until nearly noon on Sunday. Itchiness came back after lunch, so I took more benadryl, and loaged around the house for the rest of the day while Katie went cleaning and reorganizing happy.

She rearranged Ryan's room - we took out his changing table and put it in the basement (does it say on the benedryl box not to do heavy lifting while under the influince?) and I think I about had a heart attack or something. My ears started ringing and I got really nausious. Fortunately, that was the only furniture that had to go downstairs.
She put a couple of different bookcases and his toy box in his room, so now that's officially his toy room, but he still has some of his bigger stuff in the den. It really looks like a big-boy's room now... Next step is converting his bad into a toddler bed - we haven't done it yet since he's really showed no interest in climbing out of the crib at all.

We missed small group - I think I was busy being passed out from benadryl.

I'm at work today with no benadryl , and really no signs of the bites getting less bad, but I don't think they've increased in number either... So, if I get where the benadryl creme doesn't do the job anymore, I might just go home.

Tags: geek, health, ryan

Day off yesterday. Went to the doc in the AM about my blood pressure, which is says is showing massive improvement on the small dose BP meds, so he's given me a 6 month Rx for it, and told me to lose weight (again) -- I went the wrong way this month (+3 lbs), so I need to get out of the bad habit of eating out so much.

After that I spent many hours in the yard mowing and fixing some of the loose boards in the fence. The new catcher works excellently on the bermuda in the front, but it has a hard time with the fescue in the back.  I guess it's because it gets so tall that the bottoms of the leaves are still wet unless we haven't had rain in a month?   So - I have to cut the tall part twice, effectively, to get it to bag up all the mulched bits - but that doesn't really add too much time to the project since it's really only really bad in about 25% of the back yard.

I went and got a seed spreader, a whole yard weed treatment, and a whole yard insect control - I'll probably get those out on Saturday, weather willing.   I'm a little worried about killing everything even though the weed killer is rated for bermuda and fescue to be safe, so I'll probably take a paranoid route and just do a small area for a week or so.

I need to get motivated to try to repair the gate that's sagging on its hinges, and still need to figure out how exactly to fix the threshold on my back door that's causing it to stick...

Tags: fix it, health, lawn

Yesterday I finally went back to the doc for my June '08 followup on my blood pressure.   I was a bit late in doing that...   Invited Clifford to yell at me, so he spoke sternly to me about my health and that I need to not die for the sake of Katie and Ryan.   Though, I've lost about 20lbs since he weighed me last May, so he gave me some encouragement on that front.   My BP is still a little high, so he wants me to try to lose 10 more lbs in the next 3 months.   For some of that, we wants me on a very small dose of BP meds that we're going to experiment with for the next few weeks.

Donnie called. said the car was done, so we went and picked that up.  It sounds good as new - so that seems like money/credit well spent for now.   Hopefully will get my money back from the stupid Amazon UK people so I can replenish the emergency fund (which didn't cover this particular expense completely, but helped significantly to avoid using the CC) - so Dave Ramsay's system DOES work, if you follow it...

Hung out with Brian and Amanda last night - they made us burgers and wieners, got Brewsters, and then drove around Acworth looking at houses in a new neighborhood.   It's always fun going over there and just hanging out.  Ryan likes playing with Brian and Amanda, too - so it's a good time for everyone.

My 4-port RAID card came in on Thursday with the Hot-Swap drive bays, so I set that up on Thursday night.
The 8-port came in on Friday - same card, more ports.   I was excited to find out that changing the card didn't break the array so I would have to rebuild it.   It acted like nothing happened.  Cool.   I accidently won 2 cards on e-bay, a 4 and an 8 port.   I really wanted the 8, so the 4-port's back on eBay now.
Spec:
3ware 9550SX-8LP RAID controller with an iStarUSA BPU-350SATA 5x3.5" hot-swap drive cage.
4x750GB Seagate Drives in RAID5, totaling out at just over 2TB.
Windows 2008 server

So now I should be able to retire an assortment of 80 and 100G drives...

Tags: fix it, geek, health