Blogrilla

We had a nice wholesome Halloween. We visited neighbors who look forward to the kids coming to trick-or-treat. We visited the neighbors who are pregnant and the kids remind them of what they’re in for. We went across the street to Mrs. Doyle’s house which was decorated with all manner of tacky halloween lights and ghouls and goblins.

“You have the spookiest house on the block!” I said. “Are you going to decorate for halloween?”

The kids were universally a big hit, especially with the older neighbors. We went farther than normal and Grace had no trouble keeping up or going the distance. Oddly after about 10 houses Gabriel threw in the towel. He doesn’t like chocolate so Halloween isn’t quite as exciting for him as it is for the others.

Grace, though, has GOT the whole Halloween idea! She loves trick-or-treating! Ben did a good job of being the big brother and Chloe had a good time too.

The weather was perfect and we had a fine time!

Tags: Uncategorized by Private Idaho
No Comments »

While it was going on the weekend wasn’t so bad. I had a party on Friday night that we had to go to — it was no fun. On Saturday we were unpleasantly busy had a nasty lunch out and then the kids played soccer in a suprise snow storm. The evening’s TV stunk on ice.

Nonetheless, I had to stay up until, like 3 o’clock in the morning. SAP recommends that when day-light-savings is over that customers shut down SAP during the second hour. You know how at 2am the clock starts over at 1am again? You end up with a duplicate hour between 1am and 2am. If you were to get two entries in a table with the same timestamp it could corrupt the entry.

Suprised? Me too. I can’t believe they haven’t come up with a better method yet. Nonetheless, it was my turn to stay up. At 1:30am I shut down all of our production system and then killed 90 minutes while time crawled along. When it reached 2am I started all our systems back up and headed off for bed. Dog tired.

On Sunday we took the boys to GameStop so they could get a new game for Ben’s Nintendo Gameboy followed up by another lousy lunch out. I discovered that someone had smashed the rear window of my 2000 chrysler sebring.

At the time I didn’t really mind it all. But just now as I was reviewing the weekend in my head, I think it was pretty crappy and all I can think is thank-god-its-over.

Turns out Monday has been a great improvement over the weekend. Its halloween and we have to take the kids trick or treating. The weather is good and it should be a fine time. The kids are all old enough to handle their own candy. Last year they were getting tired and wanted to call it a night before we had finished the block!

Unbelievable! I hope they’re more enthusiastic this time.

Tags: Uncategorized by Private Idaho
No Comments »

On Friday night a friend of the family threw her anual halloween party so the kids got all dressed up. It was a good opportunity to snap a couple of pictures to show off my kids!

I’ve never heard of a dark fairy, but why not? That’s what Chloe decided to be for Halloween this year. Grace decided to be a kitty-cat. She really made a very cute cat, I can tell you. The headband with the ears didn’t even last long enough to go to the party. They all had a good time.

Gabriel went as a “faceless-phantom” while Ben dressed up as a Clone Trooper from Star Wars. In both cases, you can’t see their face.

Last week Liz was talking with Gabriel at one of the kid’s dance classes. Because of the season they had all dressed up in their costumes. The dancers were all in their costumes and I guess its a fun thing they do every year. Liz was asking Gabe if he’d like to dance. Gabe’s answer?

Completely humorless and deadpan: “Faceless Phantoms don’t dance.”

He’s hilarious. He really cracks me up. He’s right, of course: they don’t dance. but, man is he funny!!

Tags: Uncategorized by Private Idaho
No Comments »

WBUR - Listening Center

Hah! I can listen to special coverage of the Fitzgerald press release. They’re doing special coverage. Dubya is supposed to come on in 10 minutes to say that Libby is innocent until proven guilty and that Bush has never met the man.

This is my guess.

Looks like work modified their firewall so I can listen to streaming audio from WBUR.

Tags: Uncategorized by Private Idaho
No Comments »

ABC News: Scooter’ Libby Indicted in CIA Leak Case

I got this email a few minutes ago:

Breaking News from ABCNEWS.com:

CIA LEAK GRAND JURY HAS HANDED UP INDICTMENT — NO DETAILS YET

http://abcnews.go.com?CMP=EMC-1396

This isn’t helpful news!! This isn’t “breaking” news! This isn’t news! They’re saying “Something has happened, but we don’t know what!!”

Stay on your toes and watch our advertisements while we get some details! “

Tags: Uncategorized by Private Idaho
No Comments »

I spent three flipping hours this morning trying to resolve a problem with a development and quality assurance servers. This morning our server and network teams decided to reset the network card configuration so it would start using gigabit ethernet instead of 100/full.

Great.

That shouldn’t have any bearing on why my application won’t connnect to the database. They’re on the same machine. But its CONCEIVABLE that the change did something unintended. So I spent three hours trying to track down the problem.

FINALLY a DBA says, oh by the way, we installed some new software on those two machines that changed the PATH environment variable so SAP was trying to connect to Oracle with an incompatible DLL!!

THREE HOURS!

And they knew what I was doing for the last TWO hours! This is what kills me. They don’t let people know what’s going on. If I had known there was new software that had been recently installed I wouldn’t have been so focused on the network.

Razzafrazzagrazzit!!!

Tags: Uncategorized by Private Idaho
No Comments »

CNN.com - George Takei, ‘Trek’s’ Sulu: I’m gay - Oct 28, 2005

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — George Takei, who as helmsman Sulu steered the Starship Enterprise through three television seasons and six movies, has come out as a homosexual in the current issue of Frontiers, a biweekly Los Angeles magazine covering the gay and lesbian community.

This doesn’t bother me, it just suprises me, you know? Its like finding out that he’s a gourmet cook or likes to tan his toes — just an interesting and unexpected tidbit of information.

You should go to the article, though, because they have a picture of him looking REALLY gay. After seeing this picture you immediately say to yourself “well, of course he’s gay!”

duh.

Tags: Uncategorized by Private Idaho
No Comments »

CNN.com - Annan: ‘Dismay’ over?Iranian?comments on?Israel - Oct 27, 2005

(CNN) — U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has expressed “dismay” over the Iranian president’s comments urging the destruction of Israel.

Is Anan NEW to this job?! Has he maybe never heard that most of the middle east wants to destroy Israel? Perhaps he was out the day they covered the war for Israeli indpendence.

And the first Arab Israeli war and well, helll all of these:
War of 1948
War of 1956
War of 1967
War of 1968-1970
War of 1973
War of 1978
War of 1982

I couldn’t remember them all, so I looked them up at Wikipedia.

I think Anan missed a lot of school.

Why on earth would Anan be dismayed at comments like these?!

Tags: Uncategorized by Private Idaho
No Comments »

Stalking the Poor to Soothe the Affluent - New York Times

The New York Times Op-Ed page is full of people who are worried about republicans in congress screwing the poor to benefit the rich. There’s one about the need to treat prisoners humanely as well. It looks like the op-ed page has finally turned 100% against the white house. It looks like they’ve dropped all pretense.

Its fabulous!

Tags: Uncategorized by Private Idaho
No Comments »

Grace cut out a heart from pink construction paper. Its big, like eight inches across and it looks awful. its all jagged and more closely resembles an actual heart than the typical two-humped triangle-thingy we normally see.

Just the same its my favorite bookmark and I take it with me everywhere.

Tags: Uncategorized by Private Idaho
No Comments »