Tony's infrequently updated blog
2003 2004 2006 2007
2008 (and beyond)
Wow have the last couple of weeks been busy!
We went to
Trans-Siberian Orchestra
again this year. It is hard to believe but the show gets bigger and better every
year.
We went to the
PrestonWood Christmas presentation.
I have a sinus infection of some sort that made getting ready for Christmas dinner
a bit of a chore but we got ready and the evening went off without a hitch.
We even got a private concert from Joiey on his Harp.
We had a scare when making the fudge when I didn't stir frequently enough and the
sugar burned to the bottom of the pan. But the end result was probably the
best fudge we have done in the 11 years we have been doing Christmas at our house.
On a high note, Tarren made the front page of the Denton Register Chronicle. Granted
it wasn't the picture he wanted on the front page of the paper but you gotta take
your 5 minutes when you can get it. The story is here
http://www.dentonrc.com/sharedcontent/dws/drc/localnews/stories/DRC_Argyle_falls.154dab17.html
and just in case they remove the story here is a
local copy of the picture
Tarren is #40 in the middle
On an even higher note Tarren was named Defensive Player of the Game. This is more
than huge considering this is the high school equivilant of the Super Bowl.
Argyle HS is headed to the Class 2A Division I State FINALS for the first time (Argyle
split off from NorthWest ISD about 5 years ago). The trip to state was clinched
Saturday night in Stepehville by a 28-20 victory over the Early Longhorns. Early
made a valiant attempt to come back late in the 4th quarter but a failed onside
kick sealed the deal.
The State Championship will be in Tyler at 7pm on 12/16 against the Newton Eagles.
On a humorus note the Argyle head coach Todd Rodgers does not like getting wet.
After the last 3 games the team dumped the water jug on him near the end of the
game to celebrate the victory (Tarren seemed to be right in the middle of every
attempt). The last time the team had to chase him around the sidelines to get him.
This week he got smart, near the end of the 4th quarter when it appeared that the
game was won he had the trainers empty all of the water jugs so that the team couldn't
get him.
We went to
Doberman Rescue's
Christmas party on Sunday. We got there near the end of the party but there was
still about 40-50 dobes in attendance. Rusty had a fun time visiting with the other
dobes that he met. We took a couple of pictures that I'll get scanned later.
This video is quickly circling the internet. It is someone's Christmas lights set
to music.
I did some research and found the notes below regarding this display,
After doing some googling I found out that the display was made Carson Wilson of
Mason, Ohio and features about 16000 lights. 88 LightORama channels. The MEGA tree
has 4800 lights, the triangle in the middle has 22 trees of 300 each (6300 lights)
Unfortunately due to his internet connection he was unable to upload a better quality
video.
LightORama is the software
used to coordinate the display.
The song is Wizards IN Winter by
Trans-Siberian Orchestra, from the Lost Christmas Eve CD
I also found this funny link,
Ugly Christmas Lights. This site serves to acknowledge those who go just
a bit too far with the lights.
That is a philosophy that many of you already live by.
Here is an example of why that is a good idea.
Scenario:
Hanging Christmas lights on 2 story house using 16' aluminum extension ladder (the
kind that is 2 ladders together and one slides up to increase height), ladder weighs
about 100lbs.
I have successfully put lights on about 2/3 of the eaves and need to move the ladder
over about 3-4 feet to hang the next section over the front door. The peak is about
22' feet up. I need to move the ladder off the grass and onto the front walk. We
have already strung lights along the walkways on little stakes, this is going to
require me to lift the ladder about 6" off the ground to clear the lights, not the
1-2 inches I have been lifting to move the ladder. (remember the ladder is extended
to about 20 feet)
I lifted the first leg of the ladder over the lights, set it down, so far so good,
I lifted the ladder to clear the 2nd leg over the lights, that's when the top of
ladder started to come back towards me. I tried valiantly to recover, Heather jumped
in and tried to help. I then realized that I was not going to be able to recover
and had 3 goals, don't let the ladder hit me, don't let the ladder hit Heather,
don't let the ladder slam to the ground (might break the ladder or the lights on
the ground)
I accomplished one of my goals, I didn't slam the ladder to the ground
Heather has a really cool looking 3 inch wide bruise on her right wrist from where
the ladder hit it, I expect this to add some color to the holiday pictures.
I have a 2 1/2" gash on my skull, now closed by nine stitches caused by one of the
rungs impacting my pointed head
Picture of my stitches (the slimy looking stuff is an antiseptic salve)
Take Aways,
- Put the lights on the house first, not the landscaping so that you don't have to
maneuver around the lights on the ground.
- Lower the ladder before moving it, so it is not as top heavy.
- If you should start to lose your balance, slam the ladder into the house, it can
take the impact better than your skull.
We also picked Rusty up from Man's Best Friend on Sunday. The trainer put him through
his paces while we watched from behind a 2 way mirror. Then Heather and I got to
start learning how to work with him. We will be working with Rusty several times
a day to get him used to doing the commands with us. We are also going back for
regular 30 minute sessions to be able to get him to off-leash.
We went back to the WinStar casino Sunday with Giles and MaryLou. And hey
big shocker of the day, the casino won again!! Heather and I both hit a couple
of decent spins (Heather got a 400 and a couple of 200's, I also got a 200) on the
quarter slots, of course we kept playing trying to hit a bigger pot until our winnings
were gone. Oh well we dopn't go to the casinos expecting to win the rent so it's
no big let down when we don't do so well.
Argyle HS Football
Argyle HS advanced to the playoffs again this year and the first game was Thursday
night against Scurry-Rosser (near Kaufman). After an early fumble Argyle dominated
the remainder of the game. The final score was 45-0. Next round is against
Prariland.
Doggie Update
MBF called us to let us know how Rusty was doing after his first week. The trainer
reports that they have fixed the counter diving, jumping up on people (usually pawed
at you), heeling. He did state that they might not get him completely off leash
but that since we bought the lifetime package we can finish that later if needed.
Rusty is doing well with the things he was taught in the PetsMart class, sit, down,
leave it, drop it, etc... But, we are still having behavioral problems that have
to be fixed. Namely, inappropriate chewing and counter diving. Based
on the recommendation of several people we enrolled him at
Man's Best Friend. The package we chose requires him
to be boarded at MBF for 2 weeks of training. After the training we go in
and learn how to work and maintain the new Rusty. It is going to be tough
being without him for two weeks but the end result will be worth it. According
to the trainer he will be obedient enough to go leashless in the front yard not
to mention breaking him of the other behaviors. Rusty was kind enough to demonstrate
his counter diving behaviors during the evaluation with the trainer by grabbing
a pen off the desk. Rusty did drop the pen when commanded to which impressed
the trainer. The trainer stated that his having some of the basics already
down will enable him to teach Rusty more advanced tricks/behaviors.
It's been a rough couple of weeks at the football games.
On 10/28 We went to Saddler to play S & S Consolidated. An S&S player was taken
off the field in an ambulance during halftime for a potentially broken rib.
In the 3rd quarter an S&S player was moving to do a low block on an Argyle player
when he was hit in the side of the head causing a neck injury. He was tended
to for about 20 minutes on the field by paramedics, then taken to a nearby field
and LifeFlighted to a nearby hospital for x-rays. We found out later that
he is ok.
Tonight we had a home game against Calisburg. During the 2nd quarter a player
ran into one of the referees (the umpire) striking him in the head with his face
mask. The referee went down quickly and stayed down. When the medics
reached him and rolled him over they quickly determined that his heart was not beating
and started administering CPR. A defibrillator was brought on the field but
I didn't notice if it was used. The referee was speaking when loaded into
an ambulance and taken to a nearby hospital. We were informed later that he
was in stable condition in the hospital. I don't know if he had a heart attack
or if the fall (face first) somehow stopped his heart.
My Aunt, Martha Murphy (dad's sister), has passed away.
The doctors said her new heart was doing fine but the infection in her lung was
too much for her to overcome.
She is up with Roy now and is back to her old self.
Time to catch up on entries, not too much going on lately, working hard at work
(more or less) working out hard, tinkering around the house.
I guess there are a couple of things going on though, I updated
Rusty's page with new pics and such, I also have the pictures below from
various football entries
One additional note about Texan Stadium it is very nice we played 2 games there
both starting at noon. The stands are very nice and very shiny, we
baked the first game at over a 100°, the second game was in the 70's under bright
sunshine, Heather and I both got sunburned at the cooler game as we were using an
umbrella and sunscreen at the really hot game.
We went through the beginner doggie training program at PetsMart. I say we
as I think Heather and I learned as much as Rusty did. (pictures over on the Rusty
page)
And as if to prove to us that he was smarter after 8 weeks of training Rusty found
a purple ink pen on the counter, which he promptly chewed into itty bitty pieces
sitting in the middle of the living room floor while Heather was getting dressed
one morning.
Note: Home Depot carries a product called Folex. It is stocked by the vacuum
cleaners. This product absolutely kicks butt at removing stains, including
purple ink from the living room carpet :).
I got to do something I have never done before over the weekend.
I was just hanging around before the Twins football game when I was asked if I wanted
to help work the sticks for the game. "The Sticks" are the line of scrimmage
and first down markers, it is the responsibility of the home team to provide this
service and is normally done on the visitors side of the field. Due to some
allegations of improper behavior (using cell phones to call the home team with the
visitors plays) the league we are in now requires that the sticks be on the home
side.
I had a blast doing this as it is by far the 2nd best seat in the house (best would
be the players themselves). You get to hear the coaches and players "discussing"
previous plays and planning for the next play. I will probably hang
around the field gate looking like I need something to do so I can get asked again.
Lesse, other developments since it has been a month since I blogged,
Aunt Martha finally got her heart transplant and was initially doing very well,
now she has some sort of lung infection that is knocking her down pretty hard.
Rusty is doing great. He is responding well to the training at PetsMart.
The only trouble we were having is that he was pulling something fierce on the leash
when being walked. Glenda bought us a halter that wraps under the front legs
and across the chest that is supposed to stop him from pulling. WOW, talk
about night and day, we can now take him for walks around the neighborhood without
getting our shoulders dislocated.
I am working out again after a 3 month break. I took a break from working
out after Smokey passed away and just couldn't get it back into my routine..
Man but I was sore that first week!!
Words cannot begin do describe the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in
Louisiana and Mississippi This is even more real for Heather and I as
we were walking the now flooded New Orleans streets a month ago. The
street in front of our hotel had several feet of water running down it
on Tuesday.
Then to follow up on nature's devastation the human factor kicks in. Gas
stations raising prices by 50 cents or more OVERNIGHT, the owners of these stations
should be prosecuted as criminals for price gouging at a time like this. There
are isolated reports of worse price gouging closer to the disaster areas.
It is just amazing to me that someone could be so focused on money to double or
triple prices just because they are the only game in town. Texas Governor
Rick Perry has setup a toll free hotline to report price gouging, 1-800-252-8011
(also see
http://www.oag.state.tx.us)
The other human factor is the looters. No one can blame people for stealing
food and water, these are basic necessities and there is nowhere
else to get the food. But there is certainly no need for TV's, jewelry and
every thing else being stolen.
Apparently word went out to the refugees to evacuate to the Convention Center,
but no one was there to help the refugees, no aid workers, no food, no
water. The situation at the convention center dissolved quickly, several rapes
were reported and many children and elderly died.
I happened upon a blog created by an ex Special Forces guy holding down the fort
in a New Orleans datacenter of an Internet hosting company. He has some great
comments on how things really are in New Orleans, quite a different picture than
the one painted by the mainstream media. Head over and read up, you'll need
to go back 60-80 entries to get pre-hurricane entries, then work your way forward.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/
A busy weekend for Rusty and for the rest of us.
Chadd and Caston stayed over Saturday night which gave Rusty two more play friends
and two more laps to leap into. We also gave Rusty a bath Saturday
afternoon. He took to it the same way he takes to me brushing him, he
strikes a pose, then just stands there staring while we groom him. I do mean
staring too, usually if I look at him square in the face he will lick me or some
such, when he is being groomed he just stays dead still, staring straight ahead.
He was even pretty good for not shaking off too many times, although he did get
me a couple of times. And boy let me tell you was he hyper when we
got him dried off and back in the house.
Sunday was even busier. We took him back to Doberman Rescue for the first
time since we picked him up. I wanted to wait a couple of weeks after we got
him home before taking him back so he wouldn't think he was still being fostered
or was being dropped off. Rusty had a great time sniffing the other dobies
and German Pinschers. We got to see a couple of full grown dobies (and I mean
grown, these guys were big) leaping right in the stock tub and cooling off.
It was all I could do to keep Rusty from jumping right in with them. When
we originally picked him up the lady that was fostering him told us he loved to
play in water so this was no great shock. We are going to get a tub of some
sort from the feed store around the corner and put it on the patio with the grill.
We are going to keep going back to visit everyone and so that Rusty can keep socializing
with other dogs, some bigger some smaller. He did get a pretty serious growling
at when he peeked into the open door of a van only to find that the doggie owner
was still in it and didn't take kindly to the intrusion, Rusty did well just backing
up a bit and heading off in another direction. We also saw the blue dobie
(Maverick) that we saw when we first picked Rusty out, and boy has he grown, he
is now looking like a dobie and great news for him Maverick was adopted Sunday.
As if this wasn't enough we also took Rusty to his first training class at PetsMart
Sunday evening. Most of the other dogs in the class are less than 3 months
old, other than a 2 year old and of course Rusty at 8 months. Rusty is the
biggest dog in the class by at least 20-30 pounds and he towers over all of the
other dogs, although other than once exception (the two year old) most of the dogs
don't seem intimidated by him, I can't say the same for some of the owners though
:) The teacher put us right next to her and used Rusty as the example dog
to demo all of the tasks the dogs were going to do. Rusty couldn't have made
us prouder, he did every task dead on the first time out. For the task of
trying to keep the dog from jumping up to get something out of your hand he patiently
waited till she brought the treat down to him, the teacher ended up going to another
dog that would jump up trying to get the treat so she could show the behavior
you were trying to stop. We do need to work on him trying to eat your hand
when you have a treat closed up in it. One thing we did notice is that when
the teacher said "ow" to clue him in that he was nibbling too hard he immediately
backed off. It definitely looks like Rusty has been in some formalized training
before.
We brought Rusty home today. He sniffed around the truck and then
slept for the 2nd half of the drive home.
We had a couple of toys out that Smokey was never very interested in out just in
case Rusty wanted them, he immediately ran to them and started playing with them.
We gave him a rawhide bone and he ate the entire thing in the first night.
He seems to enjoy his new back yard and house with plenty of new sites, smells
and sounds. There are also some pretty strong Smokey scents left as every
now and then he will do a quick stop and sniff the heck out of a spot of carpet
or the edge of a chair.
Heather had an
ICES Annual Convention (Cake
decorating) in New Orleans and of course I couldn't let her run around The
Big Easy without me so I tagged along
While in New Orleans We took 2 river boat cruises, toured a couple of sugar plantations, The
National D Day Museum, Mardi Gras Float maker and all kinds of other fun site seeing.
Heather had a great time going through the ICES exhibit hall, the cake room, and
not too mention the pro's giving demonstrations of techniques and tools.
We wandered up and down Bourbon St several nights hanging out with John from
work and his wife Diane who is also into cake decorating and was also attending
the convention. It felt really weird walking up and down a public street openly
consuming my
"Huge Ass Beer"
. We saw a couple of blues bands and hung out at length watching classic
rock cover bands at the
Famous Door club.
There was some great people watching on Bourbon street and even a couple of ladies
flashing but the most shocking thing I saw the entire week was not even a person making
a fool of themselves, not that I didn't see adults doing silly things
mind you. People brought their children to Bourbon St. I'm not talking
infants who aren't aware what is going on, I saw everything from 5 to 15 year olds,
and LOTS of them. I am also not just referring to 6-7pm, I saw several
5 year olds out on the street at 12:30 am, that's right, AM, it's
dark o'clock in the morning and these idjits have their children out on Bourbon St.
Some people just amaze me.
We drove the Yukon so that we would have the truck handy if we needed it.
Turns out our hotel was on the west border of the French Quarter and a short walk
from everything else we wanted to do so it stayed parked in the hotel garage for
the entire week (at $20 a day mind you). We did see something cool on the
way back that made it worth the drive. On the south side of eastbound I20
in Arlington between 157 and I820 we saw 20 individual grass fires.
Each of the fires was only about 50 feet in diameter but the long line of separate
fires was still a trip. We found out later that a truck had a blow out and
kept driving, the tire caught fire was when it came apart the pieces landed
in the grass and started the fires.
When we get the pictures developed (we only used the digital for the cakes) if I
find any interesting shots I'll post them.
Ever since Smokey passed away we have been going nuts without him running around
the house, so we adopted a dog this weekend.
Since Heather more or less picked the breed when we adopted Smokey she told me to
pick the breed this time. When I was growing up in Frost Texas we had a Doberman
Pinscher named Lady (
Lady
Lady and Snuffy ). She was a great dog and I have many happy memories
of her chasing me and Bill jr. across the yard, tackling us, then standing over
us licking our faces. So I decided on a Doberman Pinscher.
DogBreedinfo.com has
info on Dobermans on this page,
http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/doberman.htm.
I did some research and found
Doberman
Rescue of North Texas. This organization rescues Dobermans from
local shelters and takes in Dobermans from people who are unable to keep the dog.
We went to the compound Sunday morning to take a look around and see what
dogs were available. We looked at a blue colored puppy with a very long face
which just didn't work for me. Then they brought out a 7 month old red male
with natural ears named Vin Diesel that was rescued from the Haltom City animal
shelter. The people that dropped him off said that they were moving and couldn't
take him with them, this is a very common excuse at shelters. When we were
standing in the garage talking to the volunteer she giggled and pointed down.
Apparently Diesel got bored with us and sprawled out on the floor, but with his
back legs splayed out behind him almost like a frog, one of the other volunteers
chimed in, Oh Froggy Legs. We sat down under a tree for a while talking to
the volunteer and observing the dog. For a puppy he is surprisingly calm and
very well behaved. When another Doberman came over they sniffed for a minute
and he extended his front legs and put his head between his feet with his butt up,
the universal doggy sign of "Let's Play"
Well no big shock here, after sitting under the tree for about 30 minutes
with him he had hooked both of us. We completed the paperwork and made
it official. There is a hitch though, we weren't able to take him
home as we are going on vacation in a week. I don't want to take
the dog out of his current surrounding, put him our house for a week,
then at dad's while we are gone, then back to our house. We are
going to pick him up when we get back from vacation.
We have also decided to rename him to Rusty. It's not that we don't like
Vin Diesel we're just not that big a fan. Another reason for the rename is
that it seems almost every pet Heather and I have been around has had a name that
ended in a Y, Lady, Snuffy, Lucky, Tippy, Fozzy, Smokey, Harry, Riley. The
volunteer said that if you do a rename you should call them by the hyphenated name
for a while then drop the old name so they can get used to it, this will make his
temporary name, Rusty-Diesel. For some reason that name just cracks me up.
"Wow Tony, that's great, where are the pictures?" Well, you see it's kind
of like this, I err, uhm, uh, I forgot my camera (sorry Dad). I sent
an e-mail to the volunteer requesting a pic if they have one. This picture
is fairly close to Rusty, except for the ears,
http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/images10/DobermanBoomer3.jpg
UPDATE:
The volunteer sent pictures,
Rusty 1
Rusty 2
Rusty 3
After 12 years of having a Chow with a blue tongue and dark eyes Rusty's pink
mouth and greenish/yellow eyes are going to take some getting used to.
In other news, I helped move an apartment this weekend. Only one thing to
say, Dayum but it was HOT Friday, the newspaper said the high was only 93° but by
3pm we were moving stuff for about 15 minutes, then sitting in the air conditioning
for 5, then repeating the cycle. I calculated that I drank about a gallon
of water between noon and 3pm. We loaded and unloaded the truck, then loaded
the truck again and called it a day scheduling the unload for Saturday morning when
it was much cooler and we had all gotten some rest.
The last year of working out definitely paid off this weekend. Had I
not been exercising I my back would have been totally shot after carrying stuff
on/off the truck for several hours and I probably would not have been able to help
Saturday. As it stands the only pain I have is in the front of my calves (incorrectly
called shin splits by some) other than that a few scratches I'm no worse for wear
from the move.
Heather is in San Antonio with her mom, Chadd and Carston so I am roughing it this
week. They are having a blast visiting The Alamo, Seaworld, Fiesta Texas
and many other sites and the city.
Here is an interesting link I came across. Everyone's first program is the
venerable "Hello World". Basically you write a program that prints out "Hello
World" to the screen in some manner. This site,
http://www.roesler-ac.de/wolfram/hello.htm, has "Hello World"
in over 200 different programming languages.
Well I did some work today and fixed the menu so that it works the
same for all browsers. Prior to these changes when collapsing a menu item
(i.e. the House menu item) the items below (Pets, Heather) were not raised to fill
in the gap, you were stuck with big blank spaces. If all went well other than
the order/naming changing IE users shouldn't even notice the difference.
The changes weren't that great but did involve re-writing the menu page. I
tested IE v6, IE v7, Firefox v1.0.4, Netscape v7.2, Opera v8.01.
I still can't find a way to do the frame border like I want it, I have
given thought to creating a custom handler to account for non-IE browsers and use
a different frameset method that draws the least ugly frame borders, but that will
entail a bunch of work I don't have the time for at the moment. The problem
is every time I turn on the borders for the non-IE browsers I get a white border
in addition to the blue one sandwiched between the blue border and the maroon
background which looks bad.
Another busy fun filled July 4th weekend.
We went to Roger & Beth's Sunday afternoon for a pool party then out to Dad's
to watch the city of Addison's Kaboomtown fireworks. The temperature was 103°
in the early afternoon but a stiff breeze kicked in by the time dusk rolled around
we got out to watch the fireworks. I also found out that a great percentage
of the people in the North Dallas area go to Addison to watch fireworks, we sat
in traffic for almost an hour just to get back to Preston road.
On Monday we just stayed home and watched all of our neighbors breaking a variety
of laws by shooting off all kinds of fireworks. The people behind us in unincorporated
Tarrant County were bad enough but we had some idjits in our subdivision shooting
off fireworks in their back yard aiming them at the neighbors house, we called the
fire department on those kids.
As part of my anniversary gift to Heather I started painting the front bathroom
today. This will be the first room in the house not the white we had the builder
paint the entire house. We chose a technique called ragging on. You choose
two colors, a base, then a complimentary color for the accent. You paint
the entire surface with the base then use wadded up rages (rags misspelled
on purpose to remind me of Bogata) to apply the accent color. The
final effect is a marble appearance.
We chose a light blue background with a dark blue accent. The blue walls definitely
make the white of the porcelain jump out.
Heather picked up Smokey's remains from the vet today. We decided to have
Smokey cremated so we could have him near us. He came home in a
very nice 10" x 6" cedar chest. We put his favorite squeaky toy, chew bone
and his collar around the box. Just hearing his dog tags rattle again made
it seem like he was really home.
Over the weekend we gave his food (we had just stocked up with 70 lbs of Nutros)
away to a family that watches over fosters dogs for a local shelter.
We are planning on getting a puppy but it will be at least a year before the
new dog could eat the food we had and it would be stale by then.
A friend of mine has opened an online art gallery.
www.shirleyannsartgallery.com Swing by and take a
look.
Damn but this is tough, we are missing you big time Smokey. We weren't aware
how much a part of our day to day activities you were. Even taking out the
trash or sneezing reminds us of you. We keep looking for you over behind the
couch were you are supposed to be laying.
I guess this is tougher since we didn't get a chance to get prepared for this eventuality.
He was showing no signs of being sick or symptoms from the tumor. The vet
even commented when we brought him in that was looking very chipper.
The doctor said on Friday that if it was a malignant tumor we would concentrate
keeping him comfortable so we were only partially thinking about not having him
around anymore. On the bright side our last memories of him are of him when
he was at 100%, not sickly or infirm.
We also didn't get a chance to say goodbye to him in person. We just handed
him over to the vet and told him we would be back in a while to pick him up.
The is really tough on Heather because she promised she would be back to see him.
We are each dealing with the loss differently. I have written a eulogy
on the
Smokey page that encompasses all the
Smokey history that I could find in medical records and in past calendars.
Heather is going to create a scrapbook containing all of the pictures we could find
of him surrounded by descriptions of the pictures.
Today is truly a sad day. We had to put Smokey to sleep today. He was 11 years
9 months old.
Last week I noticed that Smokey's abdomen felt distended so we took him to the Vet.
The vet stated that there was a tumor of some sort in there and he would need to
do exploratory surgery to determine where the tumor was. When the doctor opened
him up today he observed that it was a malignant tumor the size of a volleyball that
had completely enveloped his liver. Since the tumor had grown so quickly (the doctor
said he did not feel the tumor when Smokey got his annual exam 3 months ago) that
the best option was to not wake him up as the tumor would soon start pressing
against his organs and causing him pain and discomfort.
So we made the hardest decision of our lives regarding him since we picked him out
of the litter. We let him go.
My buddy Jim made a statement that still breaks me up every time I think about it,
"maybe there won't be any fireworks in doggy heaven to spook him."
Here is a poem that was on the sympathy card the vet sent us,
Rainbow Bridge
Just this side of heaven is a place called
Rainbow Bridge.
When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes
to Rainbow Bridge.
There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play
together.
There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.
All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor; those
who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them
in our dreams of days and times gone by.
The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone
very special to them, who had to be left behind.
They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks
into the distance. His bright eyes are intent; His eager body quivers. Suddenly
he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying
him faster and faster.
You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling
together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon
your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into
the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from
your heart.
Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together....
Author unknown...
We went to the Bombardier Learjet 500 IRL race at Texas Motor Speedway Saturday
night. This time we took Dad and Glenda along as a Fathers Day gift.
We got to the track early enough to watch the pre-race festivities which included
the unveiling of the
Orange
County Choppers
Bombardier Learjet Bike, (another
picture). Paul Sr., Paul Jr. and Mikey were in attendance for the
unveiling. Several hundred bikes were on the track for the unveiling and everyone
did several parade laps. Paul Jr. was riding the
Black Widow, Mikey was riding the
Blues Bike (more pictures of both bikes pictured on
this page) and Sr was riding the
Bombardier Bike. Unfortunately this was an off air project
bike so I won't be able to watch the show and see the construction of the bike.
Gene Simmons was even in attendance for the pre-race festivities
The race was great with only 4 cautions (2 breakdowns, 2 accidents) the last 137
laps were GREEN flag racing. This made for exciting race as pit strategy becomes
crucially important. Tomas Sheckter and Sam Hornish Jr. had the fastest cars
all night by a long shot. They would fall back to 5th or more after a
pitstop then just start blowing by cars to charge back to first and second place,
where they would finish the race. Here is Tomas in
Victory Lane
Rookie phenom
Danica Patrick garnered the lions share of attention during driver introductions
and parade laps but quickly fell back in the pack and was a non-factor for the entire
race eventually finishing 13th.
A buddy of mine sent me these pictures from the public pool in his housing
development. They are starting to build homes up the hill from the pool.
Apparently the owner of this pretty new Chevy truck forgot to set the brake and
the truck rolled down the hill and into the pool. Fortunately no one was in
that end of the pool at the time.
Good thing this was a 3 day weekend.
On Saturday we went to the Texas Ranger Baseball game with my grandmother,
well almost. We waited 3 hours for them to call the game due to the near
constant rain. They did eventually call the game but we had already
left to go to dinner. I guess we'll have to try this again later.
I was thinking of taking Heather to Star Wars™ Episode III on Sunday but
when I mentioned this to her she had other ideas, which she usually does :).
Instead we headed North on I35 to visit the
WinStar Casino in Thackerville Oklahoma. The casino is only 60 miles
from the house but the drive took us longer as the Oklahoma side of I35 was down
to one lane as they are rebuilding the freeway. There were signs warning of
heavy congestion several miles south of the Okalahoma border. We sat is slow
moving traffic for several miles before taking Exit 1 to get to the casino.
The casino is very nice with 40 or so card tables (blackjack & poker) and
over 2000 slot machines. The slot machines are technically Bingo machines
to get around some rule or another. Each machine has a bingo card and when
you activate the machine it basically calls the numbers to see if your card won.
The wheels still spin but the outcome is determined by the bingo card. Another
interesting twist is that none of the slot machines take coins. All playing
is done by a card (similar to SpeedZone or Dave 'n' Busters). This does make
it easier to switch games without having to wait for the machine to cash out your
credits but it does make it harder to borrow from your spouses winnings win your
allotment runs out.
The blackjack tables also have an interesting twist. Each hand requires a
bet of at least the table minimum plus a 50 cent table ante. The story behind
this is that all profits from the card tables goes directly to the state (To schools
per the security guard that explained this to me), the casino gets to keep the 50
cents per hand to cover costs.
The casino was also having a motorcycle show and poker run this weekend. As
part of this activity they were giving away an
Orange County Chopper. Heather and I watch
American Chopper all the time so it was pretty cool to get to see one
of their choppers close up. They are much longer and cooler than they
look on TV.
The casino also does not serve any alcohol. No beer, no mixed drinks, just
sodas and tea. I'm curious as to whether or not this decreases the casino's
income since the players are sober.
We got top the casino about 1pm and left about 6pm. On the way back we noticed
that traffic was stopped and backed up for about 5 miles south of the border,
I guess a bunch of other people had the same idea we did.
I have been playing with Fedora Redhat Linux (Core 3) at work and
just happened to bring up this site in the browsers on the Linux box, Netscape 7.2
and Firefox 1.0.4. Wow what a difference, the navigation menu to the
left was basically dead and the frame set didn't look right.
Apparently I was using more Internet Explorer specific behaviors than I thought
I was. This is why it is good to look at your site in other browsers from
time to time. Just because the Visual Studio HTML validators say the code
is right doesn't mean the page will display the same on all browsers.
The menu issue was a behavior difference between IE and the other browsers.
IE allows you to directly reference an HTML element by document.all.[element].property
The other browsers require you to get the elementId first, var myElement = document.getElementById(element),
then you can modify the element via, myElement.property. Fixing this
allowed me to revisit some very old code and optimize it greatly.
There is still an issue in Netscape where after revealing the menu items then hiding
them does not properly shrink the page and raise the items below. This
appears to be a Netscape bug as Firefox works as expected.
I also need to fix the frame setup. In IE there is a thin dark blue border
around a dark red background surrounding the 3 frames. Apparently the way
I am doing this is against the rules (see
www.w3.org). I
researched around but can't find a way to get a colored frame border. Since
I want a colored border and I figure most of my readers (if there even are any)
are using IE anyway, I'm just going to leave it as is for now.
Are you tired of sites that require you to register before they will allow you to
view content (DallasMorningNews, NYTimes etc...). The site below maintains
almost 70,000 logins for various sites that require "free registration" to view
content. Just go to the site and type in the URL that wants you to register
and bingo, you get a login.
Note this site does not give out payed registrations, only the registrations
for sites collecting e-mail and demographic data.
Sad news today. My grandfather passed away. He had a heart attack
at the age of 80. (6/11/1924-5/4/2005)
He was a great guy who I have some very happy memories of.
I actually got to score triple play this weekend. Heather is the team mom for Chadd
and Carton's little league baseball team. Part of the team mom's job is to keep
the score. I read up on how to do this and have been doing it so Heather
can cheer the team on. We were visitors so I wasn't keeping the "official"
book, just scoring for our own records.
Bases loaded, top of the last inning, no outs, we are down 10-6. Grant on First,
Matt on second, Matson on third Wood at the plate. The batter (Wood) hits
grounder to the 2nd baseman, 2nd baseman tries to tag runner from first base
(Grant) who is running to second, he misses tag, 2nd base umpire at play makes
safe sign, runner on 3rd base scores (Matson), second baseman throws to 1st base
and gets batter (Wood) out, runner from 2nd base (Matt) heads home, first baseman
throws ball to home, plate umpire calls player safe. Sounds good, sacrifice single
scores 2 runners heck of a hit.
Well that's what you would have thought. A parent from the opposing team yells out
that the 2nd runner (Matt) didn't touch home plate which is interesting considering
that he slid under the catcher who was standing on the plate, the home plate umpire
then reverses his call and calls the 2nd base runner (Matt) out, then the 2nd base
umpire changes his mind too and decides that the 2nd baseman actually did tag
the runner, tada triple play and game over. Needless to say there was "heated" discussion
about this "play calling." as our first base coach had a birds eye view of the missed
tag, and he missed by a foot. As far as I know an umpire cannot change
the call once it has been called unless he confers with the other umpire and the
other umpire had a decisively better view of the play in question.
Final score of the play, 4-3-2, final score of the game, 10-7
Oh, yeah, Carston has been in a slump for a few games. He hit an inside the park
homerun.
Well it was one hell of a run while it lasted, 5 1/2 years to be exact.
I received my first speeding ticket in my Vette. Written up for zipping through Westlake
on westbound SH 114 at 77mph in a 55mph zone. It was my own fault
(obviously). I had become rather bold of late and was the leader
of the pack instead of running a couple of cars behind the leader. The officer
had a hell of a spot picked out too, right at the end of the freeway, sitting behind
a k-rail.
Westlake is not a cheap town to get a ticket in, $85 + $5 for every mile over.
Defensive driving is only $95 in court costs + the cost of the course so needless
to say I will be renting a defensive driving course from BlockBuster. I just
dodged not being able to take defensive, 25+ or more over the limit and you are
not eligible for defensive driving.
Well it is just over a year since dad's heart attack and time for an in depth
checkup. Dad went to the cardiologist and had several tests performed.
The doctor did not like the result of one of the tests and recommended a heart
cathertization to get a better look. The doctor did the heart
cath on Thursday and said that other than a small blockage he is doing great with
no new blockages around the stents installed last year.
Keep zooming in till you are near where you want to be, click and drag to fine tune,
when you are see where you want to be double click to center the image,
then click the satellite link in the upper right corner.
Whammo!! now you have a satellite view, you can still click and drag, zoom
in and out etc...
Google out did the old
www.terraserver.com
that originated the satellite images on the net (and is still around)
Our dog
Smokey was out taking his morning constitutional today when he
started barking non stop. Well being 6am and all I tried to get him to
shut up so as to keep my neighbors happy with me when I noticed he was
barking at something on the ground. Well it seems our great white
hunter and caught mr./ms. opossum trying to cut across our back yard and he
was kindly requesting with barking and teeth that mr./ms. opossum kindly
refrain from trespassing on his territory. We started calling him the
Great White Hunter before his coat started to darken.
It took me a few minutes to separate the two as I was having to be careful not to
stick my hand in too close as one of the two would inevitably bite me. This
is his first conquest in the new house. I guess being as close to real
country as we are there is no reason for the wildlife to try and scavenge in
back yards. He used to get 1 or 2 opossums a year at the old house.
We also went to the Butterfly festival at the Fort Worth Arboretum on Saturday.
The weather was great which brought a great part of the population of Fort Worth
turned out for the event. The wait for tickets was about 30 minutes and the
wait to get in was about 45 minutes but it was worth it.
Well it seems my web host had a "catastrophic" hardware failure on the
web data storage array. No sooner did they replace the failed drive than
another one failed and pretty much killed all the data. Data has been restored
and the subsequent error that was causing prompts for authentication (file
permissions) has been resolved. Everything should be good as new.
I found some corrupted images so I re-uploaded the entire site. (all 1,084
files spanning 55 folders consuming 140mb of space)
Lessee, for the last few weeks,
Went to Six Flags opening day. There were pretty much no lines and the
weather was cloudy but warm. Had a great time
It seems all my exercising is paying off in more ways than I thought. The
last time I had my cholesterol tested it was in the 230's (eek!!) and needless to
say the doc advised me to bring that down. Well it has been 10 months since
I started exercising and increased my food intake substantially but not really changed
the types of food I am eating that much (it's on my to do list). I had my
cholesterol and blood sugar tested after a 12 hour fast and came in at blood sugar
of 100 (top recommended is 99) and my cholesterol came in at 140 (recommended
for me is 130). So it sounds like all that exercise and oatmeal are helping
keep my cholesterol in check.
Heather was nominated to be Team Mom for Chadd and Carston's little league baseball
team. This means she has to figure out how to fill out the official score
book as that is one of the responsibilities of the team mom.
I've just been real busy with stuff not really worth blogging.
I won't go into why I needed this but suffice it to say everyone is alright after
a few stitches.
Hydrogen Peroxide (H202) can be used to remove blood from
clothing and carpets. Quite amazing actually, you basically pour it straight
on the stain and wherever the blood is the peroxide starts to foam. Then you
just use towels to pick up the moisture. According to someone here at work
peroxide also removes other red stains very well
Kind of hate to start the new blog year on a sad note but there is just no
ignoring the devastation caused by the tsunami in Asia. Here is a site with
satellite images before and after of Sri Lanka and Banda Aceh Indonesia,
http://homepage.mac.com/demark/tsunami/9.html.
Some of these areas are just scraped to the ground, not even the foundations of
the building are left. I tried to explain what happened to a couple of 10
year olds the other day, that made me realize, we might be able to comprehend
losing all of our possessions in (like a house fire) but these people lost that
plus the entire village/island they lived in.
Let's just pray the new year is better that the end of the last one.
