Friday, September 26, 2003

Thursday, September 25, 2003

Never to old to be the hero
Tif called the other night. Brian wasn't at home and... THERE WAS A MOUSE IN THE HOUSE. Tif was totally freaked. She had trapped it under a shoe box (how in the world she did that I have no idea), but she didn't know how to get rid of it. I calmed her down (some), and talked her through it.

Slip something under the box (she used a folder), flip it over, hold the "lid" on tight, and throw it out into the field. (It might come back into the house). Ok, through it into the garbage bins... it probably won't climb out.

After we talked for about 10 minutes, she hung up to go take care of it, and then called me back in about 5 minutes to say it was done. Very tramatic experience, but at least it was out of the house.

"Tell Mom when she calls me to not laugh. This was serious."

I was the compasionate one and saved the day, so to say.

Even when your kid is 22, its still fun to be the hero. :-)

LOVE YA TIF!
Wedding bells
Becky is getting married today!

Small ceremony, but I had to buy a suit. (I think this was just a good execuse for Tina to talk me into buying a new suit. :-))

Monday, September 15, 2003

Yahoo News: David Letterman to Become a Father at 56
Cool. Congrats Dave!
Tomatoes
I am very much the procrastinator, which doesn't work well with tomatoes and the first frost of the year. Usually what happens is that the forcast says it is going to get below freezing, I think "I should cover the tomatoes", I put it off, and the next morning they are all frozen and dead. Which is followed by a month of nice weather and me thinking, "If I had only covered the tomatoes."

Well this year I actually figured I would do it, got caught in some late meetings on Saturday and called Tina. She covered them for me. Sunday morning I checked them before they were in the sun, and they looked kind of frozen, but maybe not too bad. Covered them again last night and checked them this morning.

The ends of some of the branches look dead, but the rest of the plant and the fruit look great! Woo hoo! Maybe they'll actually ripen for me. :-)
Blogger
Blogger just added some new features. Don't have time to mess with them, but some look pretty nice.

Friday, September 12, 2003

ETonline.com: John Ritter Dies of a Heart Problem
Wow. He was one of my favorites. I'll never forget the time I saw him doing ad-lib with Robin Williams on a Robin Williams special.

Friday, September 05, 2003

Almost ready to go
Sitting in the hotel in Denver, checking flight times, fighting over the computer with Jaime. "Dad, you can't work, so let me chat with my friends." Turns out no one is on yet. They are probably all at SHOC or doing something afterwards. Did a little work, but mostly just checking stuff. And blogging.

Woo hoo, plane leaves at 7:30, not 6:00... so we can sleep in until 4:30 instead of 3:00! Good thing Steve double checked the documents!

Should have done the "advance flight information" ahead of time. Didn't think about it. Next time we will. Enter it all on the computer and don't have to mess with it the next day.

Well... this is probably it. We're out of here. I'll probably do some blogging from Cancun.

Later!
Old Friends
Wow... haven't been here for a while, but was checking comments and saw one from Clyde! Hey man, how's it going!
Prayer
1000 calls to the PTL prayer hot-line in under 5 minutes. Wow... I had no idea!
Whirlwind
The last few weeks have been very hectic. I'm finishing up two projects. One that is going into integration soon to build, and the other that we are bringing up on a production box.

The production system is brand new and we are trying to see how lean we can run it and still process the data. Last week we were processing 160 events a second throw one of N processes. I spent the week seeing what could be tweaked, configured, etc. We are now up over 400 events, which is enough for us to process the 100 million call records we need to process a day.

I love this kind of stuff. It is so cool. Its like being a detective (or what I imagine that to be like). Seeing a problem, looking for clues, trying to find a way to fix it. Its a blast... but it tends to be all consuming. I had a meeting at church yesterday at 4:00PM, and at 4:45PM I realized that a) it was Thursday, and b) it was after 4:00PM. Until then I wasn't really sure what day it was.

In to work at 4:45AM to try and get some last minute stuff done. I'm out 3 days next week, so need to get more than 3 days work done, 'cuz I won't be here to work things.

Leaving this afternoon for Cancun with Tina AND Jaime, were I won't be thinking about 400 events a second... I'll probably be thinking about a handful of events a day: breakfast, sleep by the pool, mid-morning snorkeling, lunch, sleep by the pool, mid-afternoon snorkeling, nap, dinner, after-dinner hanging out, bed.