Category: Life

I really need to update this site more often… I think that would make a great New Years resolution. How often would you like to see things posted? I’m thinking I could probably post something everyday, and major updates about two or three times a week. I’m always coming across interesting web sites that I would like to share with people or things that I’d like to just remember for later. Oh well, I’ll see what I can do.

We took some pictures of the Thanksgiving festivities two weeks ago, I’ll try to get some of them posted as soon as possible. I have finals this week, so it may be a few days before they appear.

I’ve spent a little time this morning playing with PopFile. PopFile is a really nice e-mail filter for blocking spam. The interesting thing about it is that you “teach” it what is spam and what is not. Since I installed it this morning I received one legitimate message and three spam messages. I had to tell it that the first two spams were spam, but it caught the third one automatically. They say that the longer it runs, the better it gets.

I’m also still working on my software section. I even pulled out some of the old stuff that I worked on in high school. I’ll try to get that posted after finals. It should be interesting.

Patra’s back in town for a few weeks.

She’s been pretty much all the way around the Pacific Ocean for the past 6 months and for some reason she still came back to Paris…

Finally, some pictures of my new car. I had actually hoped to take some better pictures this evening, but it’s coming a flood right now…

 

Yes, this is a lot like the Civic we had a few years ago. Some people at work thought that I just hadn’t driven it in a long time.

As for the truck – it was nice, and it came in handy when we needed to move something big, but this car is about 10 times more fun to drive.

It’s midnight on Sunday night, it must be time to update the web site.

I added a couple of new galleries tonight. The first one has some family pictures.

The other has pictures of Paige and me.

The family gallery is just pictures of Paige’s family right now. We never remember to take the camera to any of my family’s get-togethers.

Paige’s parents stopped by last night with Pat, John, and Luke. We finally found the best way to keep Luke out of trouble while he’s here. I think this made Max a little jealous though.

Tomorrow night I’ll take some pictures of my new car and post them. For those of you who haven’t seen it or heard about it alreay, it’s a silver 2002 Honda Civic Coupe. If you remember our old silver Civic, it’s almost just like that only brand new with a CD player and a 5-speed. So be sure and check back tomorrow for that.

I figured I’d better post something just so no one thinks that I’ve been worked to death. If anyone out there was hoping to score a job at the school district, you can forget about it now.

Dale, who retired last year, is now back at work. The “powers that be” used an interesting hiring technique to get him back. He had been teaching a class in the afternoons at the high school. They basically just cancelled his class and said “You can either come back to work or go home…” Needless to say, this has taken a lot of work off of my back.

Once things settle down again at work, I’ll try to get back in the routine of posting new pictures and occasional ramblings up here for everyone to see.

I’m also going to be adding a software section pretty soon. Graduation is in about 15 months. I’ll officially be a computer scientist then, so I guess I should start showing off some of my work.

Classes in Commerce start back up tomorrow. I’m taking three this semester – Survey of Algorithmic Languages, Intro to Databases, and Object Oriented Programming. It should be interesting. The good news is I’m now only 16 months away from graduating.

The school district still hasn’t hired anyone to help me out in the Technology Department. So if you live around here and would like to work with me, go to http://www.parisisd.net/ and click on “Employment” to find out about the position.

I guess I should go to bed now. I’d hate to fall asleep during the first day of class…

My firewire card arrived yesterday and it works great. For the non-techies out there, this is what I needed to attach my digital video camera to my computer. Now I can use my computer to edit movies.

This is actually my second firewire card. The first one I got was defective, but luckily I ordered it from NewEgg.com and they’re very good about taking returns.

Now when I get a little free time maybe I’ll put some movies here. Anybody know what you call a gallery of movies?

The students were back at school today. Whatever happened to summer vacation? I guess taking classes four days a week will do that to you. I did manage to make three A’s and a B so I guess that’s not too bad.

I’m taking three classes this fall – two on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, and the other Thursday evening. Luckily they’re all Computer Science classes so it shouldn’t be too hard on me.

I see no one commented on my cloud picture. Either it wasn’t worth talking about or everyone stopped looking after a month with no updates. I actually thought the picture of the eclipse on the piece of paper was interesting.

Oh well, my work order list was 6 pages when I got to work today and I managed to get it down to 5 pages by quitting time. Maybe if I get some sleep tonight I can mark off another page tomorrow. Hopefully the school district will hire some help for me soon. It’s kinda tough being a tech department of one…

For some reason I’ve always liked taking pictures of the sky. Clouds are just fascinating to me. Yes, I still sometimes see shapes in the clouds.

Anyway, a few months ago (June 10 to be exact) there was a solar eclipse that was visible in the our part of the world. Paige and I went out to the walking track to get a little exercise and see what we could see.

Unfortunately, the sun went behind some clouds, and then set, before we could really see the eclipse. I did take a few pictures of the clouds that evening, and we looked at the eclipse using the old pin hole through a piece of paper trick.

 

I’ll eventually add a sky gallery to the site. I’ve taken lots of sunset pictures and just random cloud pictures.

In other news, I don’t have to go back to school until August 26. I really needed these two weeks off after taking four classes in the past two months. Also, maybe I’ll have time to add some more stuff to the site.

Yes, even Max and I get sleepy sometimes. Paige says that we look alike when we sleep. I’ve added some pictures to the Sleeping gallery so let me know what you think.

 

I should also congratulate Ben and Paula. They were married last Friday. We went to a reception at Ben’s mom’s house yesterday, but we forgot the camera so there are no pictures. I’m sure no one wanted to see pictures of me eating shrimp anyway.