journaling: enabled

… most definitely here.  The wind was blowing fiercely this afternoon … gusting to around 45.  I was watching outside waiting for the cows and horses next door to start flying through the air.  Fortunately for the neighbor, they stayed grounded, though at least one cow did escape the pasture.  Today was one of those days I wish I had a weather station (though I don’t want to get one of the cheapo wal-mart varieties).

Yesterday was pretty uneventful.  Liz spent a chunk of the day out and about at a baby shower with Warren for one of her friends.  Laura and I did our usual Saturday morning garbage/recycling routine followed by fun at the park.  She likes the slide though yesterday she wanted to swing more.  Last night I spent a good chunk of the evening researching video equipment for church.  I’m still not sure what route I want to go with it.

This morning we went to church and I assisted with communion as I often do (one of the duties of being on the board of deacons).  I found myself irritated with the two people who were assisting, as they failed to help clean up afterwords.  Both have been around enough to know that there is cleanup to do after the service.  Oh well.

This afternoon we watched part of the Packer game and ate yummy popcorn.  Eventually sleep became a higher priority so we took a nap.  Woke up to good news and bad news … Packers won but so did the Vikings.  Liz left me with the kids while she went grocery shopping.  We watched Extreme Makeover: Home Edition … they helped out a family in Wisconsin! 

Back to the title of the post … it’s windy, rainy and cool outside.  I made the comment to Liz earlier this afternoon that it felt like it should be snowing outside.  I’d like to enjoy the season a little more before snow flies though.  A bonfire with s’mores sounds good too.  :)  Anyway, my night to do the mid-night feeding and I have work tomorrow … so I’m going to catch some Z’s while they’re still easy to catch.

I’ve been contemplating starting a new blog for a while now.  I’ve had one on LiveJournal for a few years but I just don’t feel motivated to post to it.  I think part of it is that I don’t feel like I have a stake in it?  I think there are two reasons I’ve hesitated …

1. I don’t really want to walk away from the content I’ve posted out there.
2. I like the visibility it offers … though I am not sure anybody goes to LiveJournal anymore?

Well, I think I’m going to try this for a while and see how it goes.  There’s apparently a client to post from the iPod Touch so I might have to try that out too.

I haven’t written in way too long. I started out the year with noble goals. Post my thoughts more. Let things flow more freely. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time. I think they’ve reached the point where they’re fighting for space and the fight is going to spill out onto the streets. Then the thought police will show up and arrest them and bring them to jail. How’s that for an idea? Why no posting? Busy. Work the day, come home and help out my wonderful wife.

Sadly our second child isn’t even born yet and he’s already making life difficult. He demands that Liz sit back with her feet up and relax and that I clean and play with Laura and feed and cook. I don’t mind it that much really. Spending time with my daughter is wonderful, even though she can be a pill sometimes. I hung a swing from the center ceiling beam in the basement tonight so she can go “whee” downstairs. I introduced it to her and spent the next hour or so giving her pushes … or watching her give stuffed animals pushes. I finally convinced her that we needed to go upstairs and eat. I don’t think she was real thrilled with the menu but given the state of our refrigerator there weren’t a whole lot of options. Oh … did I mention that Liz is out with the girls tonight? I’m glad she’s getting out.

Last week Liz took Laura down to DeForest to visit her parents, leaving me instructions to do the following three things: 1- relax, 2- go out with friends, and 3- bag and freeze the chicken breasts we bought. I got 2 of the 3 items done. The chicken is frozen and I watched some MythBusters … so guess which one didn’t happen. I was also productive this past weekend. The garage has some newly constructed shelves which make things look much nicer. Driving factor for this is getting the garage tidied up so it can hold construction materials for basement work to come.

There’s work in my life too of course. I’m happy to have a job. I have an awesome boss. Coworkers aren’t too shabby either. At some point in the past few months it was decided that we’re ditching UNIX-based server platforms and switching to Windows. I can’t say as I’m enthusiastic about this. I know there are places that do it fine, but sometimes those places have nightmares. That’s not to say we haven’t had nightmares of our own, but I like to think there are fewer monsters in the Solaris closet. I think the theory is that this will save us money. We shall see I guess. All I really ask for is a stable, well-behaved platform to run apps on … and that those apps “play nice in the sandbox.” If someone doesn’t play nice, I want to be able to identify them and give them a timeout (though sometimes a spanking is warranted).

Back on the home front. I got my server upgraded to FreeBSD 7.2 this last week while Liz was gone. Thankfully that went more smoothly than I expected. No recompiling application X because all of a sudden code changed. I have been toying with the idea of switching to Solaris so I could gain more experience with the platform we use at work … oh wait, that’s going away (see above). I think for the time being I’ll stick with FreeBSD but perhaps play with jails or some other form of virtual servers. I don’t think I really need it security-wise, but I think some things belong in their own playpen.

This summer hasn’t been what I expected or hoped. I had hoped to have our basement project underway already. It’s probably for the better than we’re proceeding more slowly though. We’re re-considering the idea of having a single large bedroom. I like the idea of two rooms even though it means a smaller master bedroom and smaller bath. Reality is that we don’t really need a lot of space for sleeping. After all, how much time do we spend in the bedroom? It will require much additional thought and perhaps some adjustment of timelines to make the budget work. I had also hoped to get some video projects moving forward this summer. That hasn’t happened yet. Been too busy. Not sure when I thought I’d have the time but it certainly isn’t materializing right now.

Church life is still frustrating in some regards. We recently started holding services in our new sanctuary, but the timeline for doing that was never communicated clearly to the board of deacons. Sadly, this means members who relied on our video recordings are out of luck for at least several weeks while we scramble to address how to handle recordings again. This was something I was going to be involved in … getting our services recorded into digital format. Looks like it’s going to be a little more “rushed” than I had hoped. We’ll come up with something though. A colleague of mine at work is going to show me what was done at the church he attends, so that should be helpful.

I think I’m going to call this “a post” for now. The eyelids are getting heavy. More to come another day, hopefully soon.

Started out the day not feeling that great, but went to work anyway. Felt progressively better as the day went on. Got home and took advantage of the fact that Liz and Laura weren’t home so I could do some tidying up and some little fixit-type jobs (latches on bathroom drawers, cleaning filter in sink faucet).

I’m thinking my lawn is going to need some mowing soon, but I’m not sure how soon to try the front 1/2 since we recently got it seeded and it’s only very recently gotten decent rain. Hopefully yet this week we’ll get some idea of how much materials are going to run for putting a bedroom in the basement. Original plan had been for two bedrooms down there but we want a nice sized bathroom which means one of the two bedrooms would be pretty small. Since our need for a guest room is pretty occasional, we are electing to go with a single master bedroom downstairs.

Well, I need to get to bed if I’m going to keep feeling better. A closing thought … a link to a list of “geek” debates.

Well, I haven’t posted in a while. Surprise surprise! Of course it seems LJ posting in general seems to have slowed down. Anyway, I thought I’d try to start a trend.

On the home front … Laura is growing leaps and bounds … 33 pounds! She loves being outdoors and pushing around or riding in strollers. We need to get her a sandbox and hopefully she’ll get some play dates with the girl next door too. Liz is growing too … our little boy is due to make his debut in August. I think this pregnancy is rougher than the last one was, but maybe nature blocks my memory of the first one to make sure we have another. This cold/flu season has been rather rough on us. Laura has had 1/2 a dozen or so ear infections and is currently battling a cold. I think I’m fighting off the same bug and an early bedtime sounds real appealing tonight.

Work is going well. My boss is awesome. I feel like I’m in a bit of a lull at the moment since there are a few little items left from previous projects which need to be wrapped up (but require other staff members’ assistance) but we haven’t started anything major new yet. We’re in the planning stages of “phase 2” of the website remake but that hasn’t turned into a lot of daily work yet.

Well, that’s all for tonight. My mind is mud, so my pillow is looking/sounding real appealing right now.

I feel like it’s been a challenge to get enough sleep lately. Evenings are spent keeping Laura occupied and happy (food, playing, cuddling). Throw in helping out with dinner when I can and there’s not much time for a lot of other activity.

Last weekend we headed up north to visit my friend Danni in Thunder Bay, Ontario. That was enjoyable. Wouldn’t have minded staying longer but our schedules are constrained of course by work. Thankfully the roads were in good shape for driving. Laura did awesome and we ended up only stopping twice each direction … neither of which were specifically for her. We changed money at the border and stopped for lunch in Duluth both down and back. This weekend, we’re being homebodies. We both have some church stuff going on but nothing major. I’m going to meet up with someone today and look at network wiring for the remodeling / new sanctuary addition. That should be fun stuff. I’m looking forward to when it’s all finished.

I also need to finish up some web edits for Dance Theatre. Among other things, I need to either figure out how to replace some PHP code with JavaScript or I need to move some or all of the site to be hosted elsewhere. All the student organization sites currently housed on the www.uwrf.edu servers are being moved to a location that doesn’t support PHP. :/ We shall see what can be done I guess. I’ve also got the itch to do another re-design on that site so it’s not so dark, but I don’t think I’ll have time for that before the concert in a few weeks.

Next weekend we’re heading to DeForest to visit the in-laws. That should be fun and relaxing. The following weekend we’re heading to Appleton to visit friends there too. That should be exciting as well. They’re engaged and we’re looking forward to finding out “the story”. After that, I have two weeks of craziness with Dance Theatre rehearsals and concerts. Hopefully life will be quiet after that for a while.

To get the ball rolling on posting again …

Okay … I haven’t posted in a while. Nowhere near as often as I should. Tonight I need to vent. Is it too much to ask for a auto shop that specializes in tires to actually be able to balance them correctly? We’ve been living with a minor imbalance on our Impreza for several months (started after had the tires replaced). We took it back to the same place tonight for a free rotation and balance (oh yeah, and a brake job ). Is it too much to ask that the balance on said tires not be *worse* when I left than when I brought it in? Yeah … not impressed with TiresPlus Hudson.

I’m getting really tired of this insomnia/not sleeping well thing (no pun intended). It’s not helping me get over this cold. It’s making work difficult. This morning I’ve spent my awake time updating my Christmas lists. Suggestions welcomed.

In other news … I have a new vehicle (anybody want to buy a 4runner?). We went over to Brooklyn Park and picked it up last night. It’s a 2007 Subaru Outback. I’ll try and get some pictures of it up online within the next week.

Right now I think it’s time for me to go back to bed for a while.

I’ve not been sleeping well lately. I know part of it is due to fighting a cold and being a little congested, but I think a large part of it is stress. Some of the stress is work-induced and some is from home. I’m meeting with my boss on Friday to talk about how I can better manage the work-related stress. I think part of it is I need to get back into the habit of leaving work at work. I used to be pretty good at it but haven’t done so well lately. I think it would help if I didn’t use my work laptop at home so much. Another part is simply juggling some of the more recent challenges that have come up. One of those challenges is combatting phishing emails. It’s a serious security issue, but is very difficult to deal with programatically. It would be lovely to be able to whack some people upside the head with a cluebat for giving out their username and password because someone has told them that if they don’t, their email will go away. Another part of my stress is here at home. Finances are tight, in part due to Liz not getting called as much for substitute teaching jobs. I know she’s frustrated by it too. Hopefully things will be picking up soon as some of the cold bugs get going.

I had another thought on last night. I believe that some people have failed to acknowledge our nation’s place in the world. I believe that for many years we’ve often taken the approach of an older brother who knows better than everyone else what needs to be done and doesn’t believe anyone else can do it right. I don’t think many of us take a look at our country from the outside. We need to acknowledge that the world is a very different place than it was 25 years ago. We can’t pick and choose what we believe to be different but need to acknowledge the whole picture. It *does* matter what other people, other nations think.

On a different note, this past weekend I took our church website in a new direction. Two years ago I tried out a couple of content management systems and decided I didn’t like them, so I wrote my own, albeit rudimentary. Last week I re-visited the issue and decided that at least one product had improved enough that it could be adapted to fit our needs. So, our church website is being rebuilt on the Joomla platform. I’m pretty happy with how it’s turning out and I’m hearing that our members are happy about it as well.

Well, that’s all for now… I’m going to relax and play a game with my wife before heading to bed. Hopefully our daughter decides to actually go to sleep before too much longer.