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48 entries. 7,841 words.
2004-12
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New York, Here We Come!.
2004-12-15.
I actually got the week between Christmas and New Year’s off from work, so Cynthia and I are packing up and heading to New York for a well-deserved vacation from this backwater ‘burg.
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Weekend Notes.
2004-12-19.
We picked up our train tickets to New York yesterday!
While surfing the web (for something completely unrelated), I came across something that I found most highly entertaining. If you go to the URL http://www.kid-coloring-page-online.com/history-of-crayola-crayons, you will find a list of resources and links on the “history of the crayola crayon.” Now if you scroll about 3/4 of the way down this list, you will find a link to a site called “Crayola Clan history.” This links to the very same Crayola Clan history found on this site! Har-har. Hee-hee. Anyway, I think it’s the funniest thing ever. Imagine all the young impressionable kids looking for information about crayola crayons and finding the Crayola Clan history. “Mommy, what’s a frag? Why did the nice crayons shoot all those other people?”
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Christmas Survived.
2004-12-27.
[…]Christmas here had the usual assortment of stress and, well, more stress, but we survived the ordeal relatively intact.
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2005-01
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Happy New Year!.
2005-01-01.
We are back safe and sound from our New York trip! More details and pictures will be forthcoming as I get around to it.
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Pictures From New York Revealed.
2005-01-09.
I think I can at last reveal the pictures from New York. I ended up having to upgrade Galleria a little to handle the sheer volume of pictures.
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Recent Events.
2005-01-20.
I’ve been woefully negligant in posting news this month, so I’ll jot down some noteworthy events from Camp Forest Brook.
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2005-02
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Chomper Update.
2005-02-26.
Today is a red letter day in the history of my teeth. Which is to say, today my temporary upper crowns were replaced with permanent upper crowns! This is a cool thing.
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2005-03
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Amiga 4000 Sold!.
2005-03-08.
[…]The last vestiges of my Amiga programming days just got sold on EBay.
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Palm Sunday Kickoff.
2005-03-20.
Cynthia’s grandmother died yesterday after taking very ill a couple weeks ago. She was 104. It has been a very stressful time for the Millers up in Doswell, and everyone is thankful it has come to a peaceful end.
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Nothing Made Up.
2005-03-22.
I suppose I could talk about some of my recent adventures.
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Goochland Express.
2005-03-23.
Went to Cynthia’s grandmother’s funeral today. Saw a lot of people who seemed to know me a lot better than I knew them.
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And The Winner Is….
2005-03-26.
We survived Holy Week okay (unlike SOME Christian icons who shall remain nameless…). By my count, including Palm Sunday and funerals, Cynthia has played for eleven services this week so far. There is an Easter Vigil service tonight and two more on Easter Sunday.
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2005-06
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Tear Down The (Shed) Wall!.
2005-06-01.
Cynthia and I spent our Memorial Day in a relaxing fashion: We busted up our shed into a million pieces. It was quite a bit harder than I expected.
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Big June.
2005-06-29.
June has been a BIG month so far, including, but not limited to: 1) leaving my old job, 2) a vacation in Chincoteague, 3) starting a new job.
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2005-07
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Expanded June News.
2005-07-08.
I haven’t done a significant update to my site in a while, so here goes.
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Work Happenings.
2005-07-16.
On the work front, I finally received network access on Thursday afternoon! I can actually do work now. I spent Friday installing software and familiarizing myself with some of the source code.
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2005-08
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Extra Crispy.
2005-08-09.
So Cynthia and I went to Tangier Island on Saturday with her family. It was pretty fun. The island itself was a little sparse on the entertainment side, which is understandable since it only has like 150 people on it.
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Scanning and flaking.
2005-08-16.
I have been feeling rather poorly the last couple of days, so I stayed home from work to rest up. While doing so, I continued scanning some family photographs. I have now scanned 739 slides and photographs.
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Mucus update.
2005-08-21.
Today is the 7th day of my most recent sickness, although since I began feeling badly last Saturday night, one could argue that this is actually the 8th day. This past week has been a complete and total loss for me, since I have been unable to go to work or do anything productive at home. And while I have been improving each day since Thursday, I have to say that it is really freakin slow improvement.
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If I’d only had a Midigun….
2005-08-27.
Wow these RSS Newsfeeds are awesome for finding things to write about on my blog. Now I can be just like television media and rip off stories from other sources! Check out the Midigun!
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2005-10
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Productivity Going Down.
2005-10-26.
I learned today that network security at work is scheduled to take a big left turn into absurdity next week. They are attempting to keep the developers completely off the network, because for some reason the higher-ups think they represent the largest security risk. We won’t be able to directly access the Internet, the database servers, or the production servers.
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2005-11
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Tuesday Night Was Okay For Fighting, Too.
2005-11-09.
Since my computer at work is more-or-less frozen up while it performs a weekly virus scan, this seems like a good time to write something.
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Big Water.
2005-11-13.
Neat. Our water main is currently spewing water into our front yard. If it weren’t for Cynthia going outside to check for mail, we wouldn’t have even known about it until the morning, when it would have been a BIG problem.
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Water Squelched.
2005-11-13.
Front yard flooding fixed. Water guy replaced the old decrepit meter with a new-fangled electronic thingy. Gushing water is gone.
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Let There Be Lights.
2005-11-28.
Friday our neighbors were at it again. You may remember from last year that these retired folk constructed a Christmas light extravaganza in their front yard that would blind most ordinary humans. Friday, merely one day after Thanksgiving, they were blasting Christmas music (we’re talking Bing Crosby here) and stringing up lights again.
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2006-01
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New Employer.
2006-01-03.
Today I started my new job.. well, technically it’s the same job, but I’ve shifted from being a sub-contractor to a contractor.
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2006-07
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Televisions and Pianos.
2006-07-14.
As you can probably tell, I’ve renamed the Genealogy News to Household News. I figure I can combine both topics into one category, and perhaps have enough material to post something once a month or so.
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2006-09
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Busy Days.
2006-09-21.
Busy, busy, busy. No time for frivolous things like the legality of torture.
- Commentary
2007-01
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I’m Somebody!.
2007-01-06.
I’m somebody! Who would have thought I would ever appear alongside such giants of Virginia blogging as Not Larry Sabato, Waldo Jaquith, and Vivian Paige!
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2007-05
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Vanity Watch.
2007-05-06.
Periodically I go to Google and search for my name, just to see what comes up. Partly out of curiosity and partly to find out what other people (aka. potential employers) would see about me if they did the same search.
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2007-06
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Promotion Obtained.
2007-06-15.
I hardly ever mention anything about my life anymore. To rectify that, I will quickly mention that I recently received a promotion and payraise. Since February, after the lead programmer/database administrator left for another job, I’ve been the only .NET developer on my team, which has somewhat elevated my importance to the company.
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Matrix.
2007-06-23.
This past week we signed a paper and made a deposit on a 2008 Toyota Matrix, which should be available in the Fall. This will replace Cynthia’s aging 1992 Corolla. We had to order a 2008 model because there weren’t any 5-speed 2007 models within 300 miles.
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Cynthia’s Mom’s Knee Replacement Successful.
2007-06-26.
Cynthia’s mom underwent knee replacement surgery this morning (on both knees) and is now recuperating. The technology is pretty amazing – they literally replace all the cartilage and junk with some kind of synthetic stuff that bonds to the ends of the bone thingys. (As you can see, I am an expert on this subject.) Anyway, once she finishes healing, her previously always-on-the-go lifestyle will be but a snail’s walk compared to the terrifying speed-runner pace she will now be able to maintain.
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Home Network Upgraded.
2007-06-30.
This past week I upgraded my home network hardware for the first time since about 1997. I had been using a Linksys 5-port Workgroup Hub all this time, but I finally got tired of the near-constant red “collision” light activity, so I bought a Netgear 8-port Gigabit switch. I also bought a Netgear router to replace the Windows XP connection sharing, which freed up one entire computer on the network.
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2007-09
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New Matrix.
2007-09-09.
We got a 2008 Toyota Matrix yesterday for Cynthia. We had ordered it earlier in the summer (because there were no 5-speed 2007 models left in the area) and it finally came in. Cynthia really loves it!
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2007-10
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Project Complete.
2007-10-21.
Late September, I was assigned to help a colleague at work finish his project on time.
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2008-04
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Tree Topping.
2008-04-28.
This past weekend I topped my first tree. I don’t think I’ll be quitting my day job anytime soon. (Dammit Jim, I’m a programmer, not a lumberjack!) It wasn’t a big tree, so at first I was just going to use a hand saw, but it didn’t take long to realize that I didn’t have the arm strength or the leverage to cut through a 6" trunk at a point way up over my head.
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2008-05
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Twittering.
2008-05-05.
I’m starting to play around with Twitter. It took some work, but I finally figured out how to send tweets from behind The Firewall Of Doom. If you don’t know what Twitter is, you probably don’t care.
- Technology
2008-07
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Bathroom Repair Adventure.
2008-07-06.
Several weeks ago we discovered we have rather significant water damage in our downstairs bathroom. Pictures of this ongoing adventure can be found here: Bathroom Repair For Programmers.
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2009-08
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The Buddy On The Mend.
2009-08-19.
The Buddy is back to eating regular dog food after a week featuring vomiting, diarrhea, trips to the vet, IV fluids, antibiotics and bland food. Since he couldn’t eat, he also couldn’t take his pain meds so his arthritic hips flared up pretty bad. Don’t really know what happened to him but he’s getting back to his normal cheery self.
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2009-11
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November Novelist.
2009-11-05.
I’ve joined NaNoWriMo and will be writing a novel this month (NaNoWriMo is a “contest” where you try to write a 50,000 word novel between November 1 and November 30). I almost tried it a couple of years ago but didn’t go through with it. This year I’m going to win!
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2011-08
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Natural Disaster Week.
2011-08-26.
It’s been a big week for natural disasters here in Virginia. First a 5.8 magnitude earthquake, complete with aftershocks (which caused a lot of excitement but we didn’t suffer any discernable damage), now we’ve got Hurricane Irene bearing down on us.
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Irene: Saturday Morning.
2011-08-27.
Hurricane Report From Richmond: It is raining. I would describe it as a completely ordinary rain, not particularly heavy, but steady. A little while ago, I heard a mild gust of wind outside.
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Irene: Saturday Noon.
2011-08-27.
Steady rain continues, with occasional bursts of heavy downpours.
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Irene: Sunday Noon.
2011-08-28.
It’s bright and sunny outside, and the ground is quickly drying. The power was miraculously restored here at about 11 AM, far exceeding my expectations. Other than the maple tree sitting on our shed, there is little to indicate that a hurricane passed by yesterday.
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2011-09
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Irene: Redux.
2011-09-02.
So we thought everything was great when we got power back on Sunday. Then, the power went out again at noon on Tuesday. It’s Thursday night now, and we are not “scheduled” to have power restored until tomorrow night.
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A Rainy Day.
2011-09-24.
So I’ve been putting off writing this post for a while, mainly because as soon as I post it a bunch of people will probably start asking me about it, but there isn’t really much to say about it, even if I wanted to have a conversation about it, because it’s kind of private, ya know? But today being a rainy and dreary day seems like an appropriate time to mention it. Cynthia and I are separating.
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2011-12
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Bye bye uvteksoftware.com.
2011-12-05.
I let uvteksoftware.com lapse for a month, then I had a change of heart and tried to re-register it, and some place called GO MONTENEGRO DOMAINS had already bought it up. Damn cyber squatters! Now they’ve got uvtek.com AND uvteksoftware.com.
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