Sometimes, work has its benefits. Rarely, I know, but sometimes work really comes through for me... like it did today.
On Friday, we upgraded our PC's at work to these sweet new Dell Optiplex 960's... it's hard to believe that Dell is making something that's worth getting excited about, but these are nice. The cases are aluminum, the buttons feel nice, and even the keyboard is an improvement over the 755's we had before. The main thing to get excited about is the fact that they are beasts... 64-bit machines with Quad core processors, 8 gigs of RAM... the works.
This upgrade meant that our old computers were going to have to be dealt with, so I asked about whether we could buy one and sure enough my boss agreed to sell me my old PC (on the cheap). The nice thing was that since I've only been at my current job for 9 months or so, I had a much newer PC than anyone else (by a full 2 years or so). So, today I brought home my old work machine - a Quad Core machine with 4 gigs of RAM, a DVD burner, 500GB of hard drive space and a 256 MB ATI video card. It may be old Tech to my employer, but to me, it's a swanky new development machine.
Katie’s family reunion normally happens at Thanksgiving each year, but with the recession hitting everyone hard last year and travel prices climbing the family decided to delay last year’s annual reunion. Instead, everyone planned to meet here in Louisiana in June at Jeem’s Bayou Hunting and Fishing Club, to which Katie’s grandmother belongs. That time came this past week, and the Katie and I took off a few days to go and hang out with her family.
As always, when her family is involved, we had a good time. The key ingredient to our happiness was of course the food. We had pie night, a staple in her family, where everyone has their favorite pie made and those pies serve as dinner. There was the traditional gumbo (Katie’s grandma makes killer gumbo… not deadly, just killer), greenbird turkey, taco salad, burgers, fish, pancakes, bacon, and last but not least… blue bell ice cream. I love you, Blue Bell.
The second ingredient that made this year great was the location - the club house (for lack of a better word) at Jeem’s Bayou Hunting and Fishing Club. Not only is the house a few hundred feet from Caddo Lake (with a pier 30 feet or so into Caddo Lake), but the entire family was able to stay there comfortable – all 20 or so of us. They had 10 rooms over two floors and enough room to seat us when it came time for dinner. There were nets for badminton or volleyball, swings, benches on the pier, and rocking chairs scattered all over the place within a screened porch. It was a great place to have so many people with so many different interests.
I hope everyone else had as good a time as I did… although from looking at me, a city boy who sits at a desk in the air conditioning playing on a computer for at least 8 hours a day, Katie’s family probably thought I was miserable. Anywho, I’m posting the pictures to flickr from the week, including some from our family trip to Jefferson, TX and the boat tour of Caddo Lake (both on Wednesday of this week).
So, my dog tried to kill me the other day. For the third time now, he’s bounced his ball over into the neighbor’s yard, only this time I had to get in a little bit of brush to try to retrieve it. The neighbor’s shrubs and the vines attached to them were growing on the fence, poking over to our side, preventing close access to the fence. I’ll give you three guesses as to what those vines/plants may have been. If you said Poison anything, you’re right.
This happened on Thursday, I think. Since then I’ve been on a regimine of calomine lotion, benadryl (lotion and pills) and today had to break down and get a celestone shot – in the butt. They call it the “hip”, but they really mean butt.
Who are they trying to fool? “Well, this shot usually goes in the hip, so lean over this table, and take your pants down a bit. Bend your leg a little…”. Lady, that’s my butt. If you have to ask me to take my pants down- one, my cheeks tense up and my prostate gets mighty nervous. Somehow it found out what happens in doctor’s offices when pants go down. And two, it’s my butt.
Anywho, the shot hasn’t really done much yet. Toward the end of the day (4-5 hours after the shot) I was feeling less itchy, but my rashes were still highly visible (people have been asking about them all day) and a bit itchy. My right eye is actually surrounded by a rash, and a rash on my forehead above the eye is creeping toward my eyebrow. Rash on my right leg, rash on both hands, elbows, biceps, BOTH EARS… here a rash, there a rash everywhere a rash rash.
You know, people on the internet (doctors, I suppose, too) say that this stuff doesn’t spread. Again, I say poppycock. I’m getting rashes in new places, places where clothing fully protected me from exposure… and I wasn’t rubbing my jeans or shirts on the backs of my knees when taking them off, or rubbing dirty poisoned clothes on myself afterwards. I’ve been to this poison ivy rodeo before. The rashes are also growing radially (or were, I should say… until the celestone).
That’s enough griping, just had to get it out there. Doc says there a 50/50 chance I’ll not sleep much tonight (50% of people have sleeplessness as a side effect), and at this point, I think the Benedryl should’ve knocked me out. So, I hope you’re sleeping better than me tonight, even if I do have a regular night’s sleep.
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So, I spent the better part of my day scratching my poison ivy rashes on my face, ears, hands, arms and back of my knee. In between scratches, my fingers were glued to my keyboard, tapping out a google gadget for bargain fiend.
Here it is in all its glory.
Feel free to add it to your igoogle homepage (or anywhere else).
Lately there’s been a good bit of press devoted to covering the 65th anniversary of D-day, including Obama’s trip to meet with European leaders on the anniversary. Until yesterday on my drive home, I hadn’t even considered what the the origin of the word D-day. Maybe it's common knowledge...
It turns out that it D-day used to be a military term for the day an operation would take place – this is not as fancy an origin as I expected. I kind of expected an abbreviation for something like VE-day (Victory in Europe day).
D-day was just referred to as the day an operation would take place. The day before was referred to as D-1, and the day after as D+1 (Similarly, there is an H-Hour). This way, if the operation’s date needed to be changed, any planning documents wouldn’t need to be updated… and this actually ended up happening to the D-day Normandy invasion. It was pushed back a day due to bad weather.
Anywho, my search turned out being a good exercise in history – going to Wikipedia and the army’s website to find out a little more about D-day.
Tonight, Katie and I were in our usual mad rush to get the house ready before company visits. I, as the dutiful husband, was tasked with the dirtiest of dirties - cleaning the bathroom. I got busy with the Lysol and Tilex , cleaned the toilet, changed the trash... all the usuals. Around 5 minutes after being in the bathroom, I realized how strong the fumes were in the bathroom. So, I finished up and left... I didn't realize it until just a few minutes ago how many brain cells had died for the cause of the bathroom's cleanliness.
I jokingly referred to my wife as a swarthy drunkard - never a good idea, married men and my first clue that my brain was working at a sub-standard level. As I thought I was coming out of my stupor, I looked up the definition of swarthy (which I was sure meant hairy). I found that it meant dark-skinned. Unfortunately, one of the very next links in the dictionary referenced a swarthy gerbil. When my axons and dendrites got together on that word, my remaining brain cells caused me to laugh out loud.
So, a word of warning to everyone that's being shamed into cleaning because people are coming to your house. Do not mix cleaning chemicals in a small bathroom. Convert, with me, to housekeeping agnosticism. How can a house ever truly be clean? If a house can never be truly clean, what's the point in trying to clean?
So, BargainFiend.com is barely a week old now, and is well on its way to being completed. I need to explore my options for finding a HS or college student to post deals on the site (for cash), and find a way to expire deals more efficiently. After all, I’m a full time programmer… I can only do so much to keep the site up and maintained during the day.
I haven’t worked on the eCommerce site lately, or on the local ratings site, but I’ll get on those here soon. Hopefully, those will be successful.
Apart from the web, in real life news, Katie and I are doing well. We’re shopping around for some computer furniture for the office (since her Mom is snagging my current desk). We’re also planning a trip for sometime this summer… Katie’s eyeing Nashville, or Vegas. I’m eyeing my wallet… since we’ll be going to europe early next year as well.
Lastly, Katie’s uncle and aunt – Chris and Ann – brought their baby (Max) home Friday. He was born prematurely and was in the NICU for two weeks, but he’s a trooper. He’s been able to gain weight and keep his temperature steady. They brought him home and showed him off to the family on Friday, hosting a cookout. It’s about time things started going their way.
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