Never Fails....

..that whenever we have an appointment for CP to see the doc, she's in pretty bad shape. It looks like this upcoming appointment will not deviate from that. She started breaking in four canine teeth at once a week or so before my folks showed up and was able to get about a four day break after that. After this "break", she caught a cold from somewhere and had it for a week. Then came another short break where she started eating well again, but last week at both library playgroups, there were kids with snotty noses and coughs. She's got a really snotty cold right now and hasn't been feeling good for the past five days or so. As I look at the calendar, it is rather shocking to see that since the 8th of this month (22 days), she's only felt good and eaten well for about 8 of them.

To top this all off, yesterday we went to Jessie Owens Park and she took a little spill and busted her lip up pretty well. You can see it on the picture on her left side. CP and I will drop the LW off at big blue this week for some sort of seminar, so she and I will on our own. It's really nice not having the security blanket (mama) around and CP seems to focus more of her time on playing and getting into things. I look forward to her not feeling sickly so that I can get back to the Y for some exercise and CP can get back in the playgroups for some interaction with little people.

Flaming Trash Can

I'm running down 22nd street on the way to my office this morning at dark:30 this morning, when I see something dead ahead in the lights. At first I thought that the lights were reflecting off of the plastic sidewalls of the bus stop, but as I got closer, I realized that some moron had set fire to the trash in the can. When the LW and I first arrived in T-town, we really liked the way that the bus stops had purple saguaros made of steel that held the little roofs onto them. I didn't want to see the fire spread to the bus stop and waste a whole lot of our tax money, so I pulled in, pulled stuff out of the back of the packed car, and grabbed my fire extinguisher. As I was doing this, some clown dressed in black comes up and tells me just to let it burn out.

Now, what's a good citizen doing standing in the vacant and dark parking lot of a check cashing place at this time of the morning telling me to let the fire burn out? This guy wasn't a good citizen after all. "Six years in the navy going to expensive flight deck & shipboard firefighting schools and I get to practice on a trashcan that some moron set on fire......" was all that I could manage to tell myself. I put it out as best as I could then started getting back into the car. I didn't even get the door shut before this kid pulls out an old replica German boot brush and tries to sell it to me. "Yo yo man, check this out, it's from the 1930s man.....", was his pitch line. I told him that it wasn't worth a @#it to anyone unless it's authentic and even then probably only to a skinhead whackjob. I called the FD on the way up the street so that they could come by and splash the can with a bit of water and was on my way. I figure that the kid probably was burning some excess things that he'd stolen from an elderly person who might have had a souvenir collection from the war. Either way, it was just pretty sad. On a brighter note, there were only six gunshots loud enough to wake me up last night.

So...

..your kid participates in one of a string of armed home invasions (bullet proof vests included), runs from the police, and gets his arse shot with cocaine and alcohol in his system........and you want to sue for wrongful death? George and Cecilia Diaz...... get a grip. These guys held a 3 year old at gunpoint for cryin' out loud!

This is unbelievable. This gang of miscreants broke into people's homes on several occasions and took things, terrorized the owners, and eventually some of them got blasted by a homeowner. I don't see how anyone can see the police as being at fault when they were up against fully armed people in the dark and they didn't sit around and ask them politely to come have a chat and some tea. If there's any justice around, this case will get dismissed and they'll have to reimburse the county for court costs.

Big Jim

Today I was thinking of a wonderful guy that I know who has cancer. I looked around on the web and found out sadly enough that the cancer had finally gotten the best of him. He was a good egg and you have to look hard to find folks like him today. They're out there somewhere and you just have to hope that you get a chance to meet them. I'm a bit shocked because Jim was larger than life.

"Son...

..you need to get you an 8 to 5 job."

That's what I heard when I called my parents on the phone to tell them about the TV show on PBS called The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard. Little did I know that a phone call to say hi would be seen as a grand opportunity for my dad to tell me basically that taking a few years at home to raise our daughter wasn't good enough for him. I alluded to the fact that the last times I listened to his advice I ended up in the Navy for six years and sold a perfectly good vehicle sending me down a long road to indebtedness.

The LW and I planned on me staying home with CP until she hits preschool and starts freeing up more of my time during the day. Once that happens, I'll be able to open up my available hours at work and get back to regular life....as regular as our life is, that is. I don't know what it is about blue collar thinking that seems to beget blue collar thinking and seems to cloud the view of anything else like dark glasses. I guess when your dad criticizes what you do, you just seem to pass it on. Well, that crap is going to stop with me. I've told the LW that if she ever hears me saying things like, "art/being a mechanic/etc. won't be a good thing for you" to CP that she should immediately smack me with the most solid movable object that she can get her hands around and swing.

I was so mad I almost cursed him (as in: "I've got two words for you and one of them is YOU") and hung up the phone. I called my brother and he was as dumbfounded as I was. He said that he'd love to stay home and spend more time with the girls. A 60-hour a week late-night concrete job helped ruin his first marriage and has kept him away from his kids way too much. He said as soon as his sugar-mama gets all set, he'll quit and be a stay at home dad too.

I guess from now on when I call the parents, I'll just talk to mom. Whaddaya think readers? Anyone else out there had this happen?

Migration

Finished up this morning with moving my website stuff from iPower to BlueHost. It wasn't really any fun, but it's now up and running. The two points that gave me fits were the MySQL database and the email stuff. I think that I screwed up with both of them. The database wasn't really backed up like it should have been and the email stuff was probably just that the mail server and the rest of the site come up at different times after the change. Still...it sure beats dealing with iPower - what a waste of money. I've been with them for 3 years and this last year it appears will have been a wash. That company pretty much has gone down the crapper in the past few years. Google them on the web and you'll probably find that they sucked before that.

The bright spot in the middle of this was Algis over at HitCode. If you need a calendar so that people can make appointments with you, this is the hot ticket. There are plenty of places out there that'll charge you $25/month to let you use their websites, but this solution works on your own website. You buy it...you own it. Algis will customize the template for you and provides wonderful customer service.

Elk & Pizza

CP's grandparents rolled into town this afternoon on the heels of a five day guided elk hunt in Coyote, New Mexico. It's good to see my folks and they look tired from travel, but happy to see our little person. We were regaled with stories of humorous guides and elk who seemed to know how to only show the wrong ends of their bodies from behind trees. Of course, no hunting story is complete without the requisite hard bed story....... CP was a bit shy tonight around them because dad's pretty much deaf and talks really loud around/to her without even realizing it. Tomorrow should be fun. Pumpkins to carve and halloween costumes to pick out.

CP and I got out the other day and went to the Children's Museum downtown with Aunt Carie, Teague, Caden, and Ashley. It was a wonderful trip and the kids were completely pooped by the time we were done. They all came back here for lunch and a bit of chicken chasing. The Children's Museum has some really great things for small people and CP will probably get a membership so we can go there often. Percussion and trains were a big hit.

system32/DRIVERS/pci.sys

For the second time this year, the wife's work laptop has crashed and taken her data with it. The hard drive is shot, but I put it in the freezer to see if anything will help it. I've downloaded PC Inspector, but I can't even get the laptop to get recognized by using a Cat5 cable or by putting it right into the router. Nada. The "new" (next victim) laptop is here, but it's a pain to get all of her remote stuff to come up and run.

Our rescue kitty is settling in and has only peed on me once so far. I scaled the wall at one of our gardens to get at the mewwing little stinker and it's been on the mend since. It must have fallen sometime or been injured somehow. The left hind leg isn't what it should be. The resident cats don't care for it much, so we've kept them separate. We hope to find a happy home for it soon.

Back In Action

CP has broken free of her teething/cold distress and according to the LW, was able to eat a lot of dinner last night. I had to work last night and when I came home CP came toddling to the door excitedly repeating, "Dadddyyyyyyyyy". It was the best welcome home that I've had in a long time and it really cheered me up. The LW is happily sleeping again, although she did oversleep a bit this morning which led to a last minute conference call scramble.

I picked up the prints and film from the first rolls to go through my "new" old Graflex 22 which looks just like the one in the picture at right. This photo is borrowed from the folks at Graflex.org. I used their site quite a bit when deciding on which large format camera I'd like to get in the future. That's when I found the 22 which makes a 2"x2" negative. It was a relatively inexpensive camera back in its day, but it makes pretty good images. I'll get accustomed to the reverse viewfinder someday. The first test roll was pretty impressive, but I wasn't really testing it with good film. The stuff that I used expired in 2003, but the prints were still good. If business keeps rolling along, I'll be headed toward a Graflex Speed Graphic or Super Graphic 4x5 camera. There are plenty of them on eBay, which is where I found this camera.

101 and Risin'

How high's the readout mama?
99 degrees and risin'

That may not make too much sense to you if you don't like the music of Johnny Cash. It appears that our "flood" of baby heat might be caused by the new teeth that are trying to break through. Last night she was at about 99 and this morning it had moved up to 101. She's sleepy, but still ate breakfast and in contrast to other kids I've seen, doesn't fuss much when she's feeling bad. She just slows way down and prefers that everything else slow down to meet her pace.

Last night we went to the GABA meeting to see pictures from a bike trip that some folks had taken to Prague and the surrounding area. It was a great presentation and we almost made it all the way through it before deciding that it would be best to get the sleeping tot home to bed. We enjoyed getting to see some of the gang there that we knew also. We both realized after getting there that it was just nice to be out of the house.