A Surreal Time

In celebration of opening day 2006 for the Cleveland Indians, my company sent out a memo yesterday saying we could wear Indian’s attire to work today. Whoohoo. So today I have on my culturally insensitive Chief Wahoo t-shirt. Go Tribe.

It looks to be a bit monsoon-ish out today, hopefully it all blows out of the area by game time. I have the afternoon off. Not because of the game, I have other appointments. But apparently the office is giving out free hot dogs and cheese pizza (for the Lenten crowd) in the lunch room today in celebration. So I won’t be running out of here exactly at noon. Can’t pass up free hotdogs, and I’ve seen the buns sitting in the lunchroom, and they are the big stadium sized monsters.

In other news: I’ve been digging around looking for information on a new band I heard on the radio named Blue October. I wanted to check them out because I’ve heard the one song on the radio by them – Hate Me, and its cool, but there’s this instrument that comes in toward the end of the song. I’m listening to this rock song, and here comes the melodious echoes of a violin. I think that’s different for a rock band, so I check their profile on Yahoo music and see that indeed one member of the band does play a fiddle. I checked out the video there on Yahoo and sure enough it appears to be a nice shiny purple violin strung in between the bass and guitar. Very nice. Keep rockin. I enjoy bands that drift away from the main stream.

I haven’t had much to post about lately. Life is pretty blah. Same old, same old. I need to find someone to change that. I’ll make a sign asking for volunteers.

I hated the fact that I spend the better part of 10 minutes this morning scraping ice off the windshield of my car. And the inside was all foggy. There might be a problem there. But regardless, where is the spring temperatures, you know, the ones above freezing? I had to get gloves out the trunk of my car. I put them there last week with the warmer weather.

The wind blew the garbage I set out at the street last night all over the place. I set most of it out after I got home last night. Then after 11, I took out the last bag. The trash cans had been blown over, were rolling around, bags everywhere. I had placed out 4 blue bags of recyclables. There were only 2 left that I could find. I’m sure more will turn up today when I get home and can check things out in the daylight.

Snickers found himself at home sleeping on my legs last night. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned Snickers before. Snickers is a puppy that Julia wanted. A lap dog just for her that loves to cuddle and smooze. Seems Augie Pug was too big. So she got this peek-a-poo, which is a Pekinese and poodle mix. It’s a little cuddly lap dog. Non shedding, good with kids. Has to be the center of attention. Well, Snickers has taken to coming to bed with Julia when she comes to bed. Usually he lays on her side of the bed, but last night it was over on my side of the bed. I may have to have words with Snickers about that. Although he will probably just groan at me and nibble on my fingers.

Random Ramblings…

Saw an interesting story in the newspaper Sunday that detailed how a local radio station (Q 104), ran a fake skit on their Friday program. And nobody would have know had it not been for a report that was there covering another story. Seems they had some lady call in and pretend to be a pregnate married lady who said her husband is out cheating on her. This happened earlier in the week. Then on Friday, they had the same lady call to do her speal again. And then they had some guy call in and pretend to be her husband. They had their little melodrama confrontation on the air. I’m sure it made for great radio. But it was all fake. A little piece of theater arrange by perhaps less then talented morning hosts in a quest for ratings. I wonder how much of what we hear on morning radio is factual…

Got to watch the NASCAR race on Sunday. It was at Bristol, the tiny half mile track. I love the small tracks. Nobody escapes without missing a fender, bumper, or other appendage. And everyone gets hot under the collar and starts wrecking other cars and knocking people out of the way. Its just great racing.

Got the latest results from the NCAA basketball pool I’m in. I’m currently in 13th place out of 165 entries. But I have no chance of further points. In fact, only 2 people of the 165 entries have the possibility of adding more points. George Mason and no number one seeds left have blasted most brackets into Loserville. Its been a train wreck of a month.

I don’t have a whole lot of work to do. It comes in waves. So when I don’t have much to do, I’ve been running these virtual labs from Microsoft covering Visual Studio 2005, ASP.net 2.0, SQL Server 2005…stuff like that there. Its such a departure. They’ve added so many wizards and ways of doing things that you almost don’t have to write code anymore. You don’t need to write any SQL code to link to your datasource, or pull out what data you need. You just run through a wizard, point and click, drag and drop, and whalla, its all set up for you. I don’t know if I like that or not. On one side it does speed up development, after you gotten over the learning curve of trying to figure out what all is available. But it seems to be taking the programmer out of the programming. I guess its all technology, and you either adapt or get left behind.

I was peeved when I went to Bally’s around lunch time. I was hoping to take my regular steam bath, swim a few laps in the pool, and then take a nap. I love my job.

So anyway, I get there and all seven lounge chairs are full. Most of the time there is nobody laying around in the pool area. But today, all the loungers were full. Where was I going to nap? Don’t the people have jobs? And only two of the people in the loungers were resting. The rest were reading newspapers. Hey, take your newspapers out to the lobby and read them. This is the warm and humid pool area where people can lounge and relax. So anyway, I spend some extra time in the sauna after the steam room and the pool. And finally the loungers clear out. So I get my rolled up towel pillow, and pick one out. I’m getting all nice and comfy when this cold drop of water splashed on my forehead. I look up at the ceiling. The roof is covered in water drops from all the humidity. So I still try and get my nap, which I did for the most part. The water drops from the ceiling only fell occasionally. But the really cold ones had an awakening effect when they hit me in the face.

Needless to say, I’ve had better days.

It seems everyone from the part of the office I work in is leaving. I should explain a bit…I work for one particular department, lets call it IT. But I sit in part of the building that houses another department. Don’t ask me way – it was a combination of office politics and stupidity. It almost had me looking for employment elsewhere. But my job is most cushy, so I’m sticking it out.

Anyway, in January the department manager and one analyst left. In February another analyst left, one that had been here for like 10 years. In March another long time analyst left. I’ve heard today that another had given his notice that he’s leaving. And the lead support staff person, who’s been here like 20 years is leaving. They have since hired a new department manager, one analyst, and an administrative assistant. And I understand they have offers out to two other candidates. There are going to be lots of new faces around here.

I found out today that I can still make a $1000 bonus if I pass the Microsoft MCSD certification. There was some question about it. Microsoft is changing their certifications to go more inline with their Visual Studio 2005 products. So we might have been changing the bonus system here as well. But things are going to stay the same this year. So, just like I passed the MSAD certification last year for a nice bonus, I’ll be hitting the MCSD exams soon.

In news of the miniscule: I wonder why spam seems to run in cycles. There was a time a couple months ago when all the spam I received was for ‘natural male enhancement’, then came a few weeks of refinancing my mortgage. A barrage of ‘help, I’m in Nigeria and need you to help me launder some cash’, emails seemed to follow. Then another spate of ‘how to go all night’ pills. The last couple days have been emails featuring lotteries. For a small fee, such and such a firm will enter me in some 200 lotteries around the world. You can’t help but win. Blah blah blah. I think there is just a big tickler file somewhere at spam headquarters that dictates what kind of spam is going out that week.

And speaking of spam, I have Comcast high speed internet at home. It’s a nice speedy connection. I also use Comcast.net as my email provider. Although Comcast says they use spam detection software, they have to have the worst system I’ve ever used. It doesn’t catch anything. Every morning I find a dozen new pieces of obvious spam sitting in my inbox. I write to Comcast support and ask, why can’t such obvious mail be caught and sent to the spam bucket. They send back a standard response about spam mailers not being Comcast customers so there is nothing they can do about it. 90% of the mail doesn’t even have me as the recipient, my email address is just one of the multitude included in the BCC of the mail. Why can’t I click a box and say to dump any mail which I am not the listed in the ‘To:’ section into the spam bucket? Seems pretty simple. Free services like Yahoo and Hotmail do so much better at policing their email system.

Ok, I’m going to go now and worry about other mundane stuff.

Went out with Julia Saturday night to Cosmic Bowling. Jim and Deb came along as well. It runs from 9:30 to midnight. I think I bowled a 132,121, and a 126. See, pro bowler’s tour here I come. I think my game will soon be improving though, because it appears that cosmic bowling may become a regularly scheduled event.

Saturday night I also had the startings of a cold. Said cold hit me in full effect on Sunday. I’ve been heavily medicated since. Its been different though. My colds are usually only composed of a runny nose. For which I take copious amounts of benadryl. This time though, although my nose was still running, I was all stopped up. Julia suggested I take some decongestant instead of an antihistamine. So I took some 12 hour stuff last night. It did a good job of opening things up and allowed me to breath last night. I actually had a very good night of rest, and felt ready to go this morning – not all sluggish and tired. I took a pill with me today to use should symptoms return. I try not to take anything cold related, because no matter how much it says “Non Drowsy” – it makes me drowsy. I don’t need any face plants into the keyboard at work.

I probably haven’t mentioned this before, but we got a puppy a couple weeks ago. It’s a Pekinese and poodle mix. Hereforth known as a peek-a-poo. He’s a small lap dog. Goes by the name of Snickers. He’s all full of energy and jumps on poor Augie pug all the time. At least Augie is getting some exercise now, running away from Snickers. Snickers is a big scaredy-dog. Any unexpected sounds sends him flying. When the big dogs of the neighbor’s come out and bark, he flies like a missile to the back door of the house. But he’s quite fearless when jumping on Augie. I believe its because of Augie’s Pug/Buddhist non-violent cultural upbringing. Snickers knows that Augie isn’t going to hurt him.

I’ve also put Augie on a new dog food for losing weight. Seems he’s gotten portly in his old age. So, I’m switching from your grocery store dogfood, to some weightloss stuff from a pet store. It costs more, but Augie seems to really enjoy it, and he says he’s worth it.

The Christmas rush is pretty much over for me. I have everything purchased that I wanted to get. Yeah me. I do have to stop and get some stocking stuffers. I usually just go down the sample isle at Marc's and fill up with the 99 cent deoderants, candy, lint pickerupers, etc...

Life's been busy otherwise with stuff I can't really talk about here. I'm feeling more and more guarded in what I put online. I don't exactly know why that is.

It seems that kidlet #2's cub scout pack is having their anual pinewood derby. I have our car cut down and sanded to a nice little airodynamic roadster. I've checked out a few sites on the net. Geez, do some of these people take things way too seriously. The amount of information on how to cheat out that .03 of second difference. How to grind the axles, hide this and that, ect... Reminds me of little league. Starts out as a great idea, and gets screwed up when the parents get involved.

Turkey day week is here. I'll be spending it in alergy hell in west virginia. Going there and coming home the same day. Because I don't want to spend the night there. And there's this crazy woman in my house who likes to get up early on the day after Turkey day and hit the stores at 5:30 am with the rest of the crazies. I'll be lounging in bed thank you. More room for me.

I was asked what I want for Christmas this past weekend. I really couldn't think of much. There is one playstation game I want. Maybe some new jeans. Replacement foil and blades for my electric shaver. I guess I've hit that stage where I have all my needs taken care of, and most of my wants. Of course, if I had more money, I'd probably have more wants. So its a perspective thing.

I think thats it. Not much happening right now. Or just stuff I don't want to write about yet.

After many days of back breaking labor, the floor in the living room has been laid. It looks quite attractive. The differing shades and colors really offset each other. The pictures don't really do it justice. Even with the flash, everything looks dark. But in reality, it looks very nice.








I wasn't feeling all that well Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights after working. But I had some horse pills that the doctor had given me before my neck surgery last year. Took those before going to bed. Seemed to help and I was ready to go the next morning, although at a slower and more painful pace.

Some paint on the walls, reattach the molding, and it should be done. Whoohoo!

I’ve been away for awhile. You probably haven’t noticed. I’ve been out of the country performing work for the government which I am not at liberty to discuss.

I find my current status as such: my house is a mess. I am installing hardwood flooring in the living room. All the furniture from the living room is now sitting elsewhere around the house. The carpet and particle board that was underneath the carpet was meticulously pulled up and taken to street. Where it was grabbed by garbage pickers the next day. Work continues on the plywood subfloor. Soon I will be ready to lay the wood. That sounds kinda naughy, I like it. I will be installing oak flooring with a butterscotch stain. It should look quite lovely. I have one more exam to pass in order to achieve my first Microsoft certification. I would expect to take that exam in the next 2 weeks. I’m starting with new projects at work. Should take me though to the end of the year and beyond. I’m am in the midst of trying to sell my car. It’s a 2001 PT Cruiser. I’m looking for something a bit more conventional. Sleek, black, probably at 4 door sedan. The Cruiser has this custom paint job, its almost a one of a kind. Not good for stake outs or remaining inconspicuous. I have it listed at autotrader.com and their magazine. I have a dentist appointment tomorrow. Just a cleaning. Hopefully I’ll come away with a clean bill of health (for my teeth). My fantasy football teams are hanging in there. Not at the top of their divisions, but right there in contention for the playoffs. I went and voted today. We in uppity Lorain county got to vote with the new touch screen voting machines. You know, the machines that the losing party will claim are rigged for the other side. I found the device quite easy to use and was able to verify my votes, both on screen and on paper before casting my vote. A seasoned citizen next to me who asked a poll worker a question, was most happy with the machine as well. She remarked that it was very easy to use and she could go back and look at things in case she made a mistake. Its a hoot when new technology and old people mix. I think that’s it. I have to go file some more reports now. The fun never ends.

While taking out the trash last night, it looked very strange outside. It was all gloomy and dark. There was this brown haze that hung over everything because there was a patch of very low clouds, moving very fast, that looked brown like sand. But when I looked up, and the tops of the trees were in bright sunshine, while the bottoms were all shaded. It was really fascinating. I tried to capture a picture of it, but it doesn't really do justice as to how weird everything looked last night...

I don’t really don’t live in the boonies. I mean, within a quarter mile outside my little residential area, is a Giant Eagle, Rite Aid, Hollywood Video, Geppetto’s & Johnny Malloy’s, Wendy’s, Marcs, and a number of other places, that qualifies your little area as a nice suburban city. But that doesn’t stop the rosters from down the street from crowing in the morning, and making you feel like your back on the farm again. Just a touch of the county to blend in with city life.

The powers that be, are continuing in their efforts to keep me from work. Road work and orange barrels now cover Center Ridge from the county line all the way to Columbia Road in Westlake. Nice going you rocket scientists. You’ve been working on a quarter mile stretch of Center Ridge, at the county border for 3 months now. Never before has so little work taken so long, and inconvenienced so many people. I think they enjoy blocking off this 4 lane road and making it a snaking one lane road that flagers have to stand at either end to control traffic.

I don’t want to talk about my weekend.

At work here this morning I continue to make progress with new stuff. It’s a good feeling to actually be building usable applications in new technologies.

The carpet arrived a day earlier then thought. The Carpet installers called and said they had us on the schedule for yesterday. We were expecting them this evening. Ok, so I run home and we clean up what little was left. Then I go to work on the upstairs carpet that goes up the stairs and lines the hall from which the bathroom and three bedrooms are off of. So I'm working on pulling this carpet up. But its get these big ass staples holding it securly to the stairs. So it not an easy task. And as I'm going up the stairs, what I pulled free, I'm just throwup up the stairs further. But it keeps plopping down on me as I'm pulling it up from the next step. So, this carpet is flooping around and I'm getting scrached and spiked with this thing. I was bloody mess by the time I got to the top of the stairs. I think starting at the top and going down would have been the much better option. I'll know better next time. After the carpet was up, I went and cleaned myself off with hydrogen peroxide, and then rubbed antibiotic ointment all over. But the carpet got laid. Its all pretty and clean, and smells like new. The downstairs tv was pulled out and put back into place with a cable box, so the kidlets could watch their programs downstairs again. Sharing one tv, upstairs in the living room, has been a chore.

There are times when work gets frustrating, basically because I don’t fully understand the software environment I’m developing in. I have 3 books for reference. I have never been sent to any training. The only person who can help has been out of the office this week. I’m stuck. I’ve been through pages of documentation, tried a number of different solutions, but still I have this issue I can’t resolve. This is why software takes so long to develop. You get stuck on little stupid stuff, because you haven’t located the correct syntax to get the software to do what you want it to. Grrrrr.

The family room is all painted. Ready for carpet now.

The experience with getting money from the insurance company has been less then stellar. They sent us a check. We deposited it. Carpet is ordered and paid for the same day. I hear from the bank the next day. They can honor the check because our mortgage company is also listed as one of the payees, so they need an endorsement from the mortgage company to cash the check. Great. So we call the insurance company. They apologize for not telling us that the mortgage company needs to endorse the check before we can cash it. This is just in case we were back due on our mortgage payments, the mortgage company gets first dibs at the cash. So they put a stop payment on the check, will issue us a new one, which we in turn will have to send to the mortgage company, have them endorse it, send it back to us, at which point, we can deposit it. What a load of hooey. Of course we had to contact the carpet place and have them hold the check we wrote them for a couple days until payday, when there will be enough money in the account to cover the check. Of course, taking a thousand dollars out of the paycheck to cover carpet, sort of means that some bills won’t get paid. So I’m balancing what absolutely needs paid, like the loans that have their interest shoot up if your late on a payment, and paying what needs to be paid. This makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. Coupled with the frustrations at work, and I’m one great big happy camper.

I think I’ve led a pretty sheltered life. Because I just had a ‘first’ happen to me today. I had too run out at lunch to move some money around to different bank accounts, and I had to stop at the post office. I was around Crocker Park in Westlake, so I take a drive over there to spend the rest of lunch. When what do I see driving down Crocker Road? A group of about 4 or 5 people out with signs protesting. I didn’t get to see all the signs because, well, I was maintaining the speed limit and didn’t want to get smoshed from behind should I happen to just stop to read the signs. But I caught one that I think said something like ‘Your Coat Had A Face’, and 'Humans Don't Grow Fur'. And there were others, I think I saw J.C. Crew listed as one of the stores. But this was like my first live, in person, fur/leather protest. How about that. Of course they were set up on the opposite side of Crocker Road, from Crocker Park. I guess all of Crocker Park is probably private property, and thus as close as the protesters could get was across the street. But they all seemed in good spirits, waving their signs proudly. I can not confirm or deny the sounds of Kumbaya, coming from the group.

After I was done and leaving Crocker Park, I came out drive way that was right across the street from where they were standing. I noticed one of Westlake’s finest, sitting there in his squad car, no doubt watching and prepared for any hooliganism from said protesters. We wouldn’t want the fine citizens at Crocker Park being disturbed by unruly rabble-rousers.

Or maybe the police presence was just there to protect any protesters from an offended shopper that would seek to bludgeoned said protester’s head and shoulders with their recently purchased Louis Vuitton handbag. The possibilities are endless.

Anyway, as I was leaving, they must have had enough fun for the day, because they were all loading up into their SUV with their signs.

Like I said, it was all a first for me.

Today we painted the ceiling in the family room. Thats always a big joy, joy for the neck and shoulders. But the ceiling is all nicey whitey now. Next the wall, and then carpet is supposed to arrive next week I think...or maybe the week after, thats really not my department.

After painting we went to Great Northern mall foodcourt for dinner. How can you go wrong with the orance chicken? The Panda place that was there is now called Stirfry 88. Looks like the same food. Tastes like the same food. Just a different name. I sampled some stuff from Saffron, the new place there. Tried a bite of the curry chicken. It was alright, but not what I was in the mood for. I choose the orance chicken. It was very good. And the fried rice was very good too. They put some kind of seasoning on it. It was yummy.

It appears Julia is on a pigs in a blanket kick. You know, the stuffed cabbage things. I can't stand them. The aroma even puts me into near gag mode. But she making a bunch to take over to my folks tomorrow. As long as it ain't me having to sample the grub.

I’ve been so busy the last couple days. I’m converting an older program from VB6 to VB.NET. It’s a pretty complex (long) program, so its going to take a while. I was typing for so long nonstop yesterday that the bones in my wrist hurt from pressing against the desk all day and hammered away at the keyboard. I never had that happen before. Maybe I need a wrist pad for days like these.

Anywho, I came to a good breaking point during coding. I’ve run into a problem where code I used to write records to an Oracle database from VB6 isn’t going to work with VB.NET. VB.NET is what they call strong typed, meaning you can’t put an empty item, or null into a field set up for a string, or a date. Well, I did this all the time in VB6. A lot of the time we don’t have dates for people (birth, hire, termination, etc…), and I would just use blanks when saving the record to an Oracle table. Well no more of that, damn it. If it’s a date field, and I send it a valid date value. I’ll have to ask some others around here if there is any company policy regarding this. What kind of data should I use when I don’t have a valid item to save out.

Ok, enough of the geek rant. On a lighter note, during this break, I was feeling a bunch of pent up anxiety, and as thus, also feeling mischievous, so I went around the office with black marker and drew some old time handlebar mustaches on pictures hanging around the office. Not people’s personal pics, the junk hanging on the bulletin board, or fridge. The chiropractic flyer with the doctor on it that someone put up. The newsletter from the corporate. The advertisement for the local playhouse. Its all good fun. Now, what else can I find play with???

This past Saturday the family went Fleatiquing. Apparently this is the combination of a flea market and antique show. This is where we have to go if we want to spend any time with Julia’s parents on the weekends. So anyways, we went to Antiques in the Woods that was being held south of Youngstown. It was a pretty interesting layout. Small booths and exhibits like you’d find in a frontier town, all in the woods, under heavy tree cover. The booths was made to look like little frontier shops. It was all very quaint.

Anywho, there were these carvings in tree stumps that were most unusual. I took the liberty of capturing some with the handy dandy cellphone camera…













I didn’t happen to pick up anything at the antique show. Nothing caught my fancy. Julia found a couple items that might go into our family room that we’re still restoring.

While on my recent trip to allergy hell...err...West Virginia, I took so pictures.

If you ever happen to find yourself in the turn of the century oil town of Cairo, WV, you have to stop at the local mall...




This is the backside of Cairo. That thin building on the far right side happens to be the Bank of Cairo. It was the hot spot for elite around town...about 100 years ago...




This is a shot of my relatives back yard. They own a number of acres. Their land just seems to roll on into the horizon...



On the other side of the property, you can see that the neighbors are very quiet...

Watched an interesting werewolf movie last night entitled The Curse. It was pretty good. Directed by Wes Craven, so it had some suspense, and campy gore. Christina Ricci stars, and makes a great ‘little good girl’ turning into a ‘big bad werewolf’. Although cleavage was quite lacking throughout the movie. Bad wardrobe department. Some good action, and some good campy gore, as I mentioned. Some good comedy too, where Christina baits the werewolf out into the open by insulting it with comments of ‘bad skin, boney ass’. Of course the werewolf had to come out of hiding, curse her out, and flip her the bird. I didn’t know werewolves were so coordinated with their hands – I thought they had paws…

Anyway, it wasn’t until near the end of the movie, that I realize I recognized one of the actors. I should say that I realized it was a particular actor, because he didn’t look anything like he appears on one of my regular television series. It was the voice. I’m surprised I didn’t notice it till near the end of the movie. And no, I’m not going to give it away because someone might be reading this before they watch the movie, and she would beat me if I spoiled it, and gave away the identity here.

Speaking of television series, I got a look at the new fall lineup in tv guide the other day. The networks are trying to make my life difficult on Thursday. There are a couple days of the week, where there isn’t anything I’m interested in watching. Then there comes Thursday at 8pm. Now showing on Thursday at 8pm, is Alias on ABC, Survivor on CBC, the OC on Fox, and Smallville on the WB. With the current set up in the house, I can only watch one show, and record two others. Unless I figure something out, I’m short one tuner. What the hell. Couldn’t they spread ‘em out? Geez. Well, its during these times of grief, tumult, and uncertainty, that inspiration is born. I’m still waiting on mine.