In but not of

good and bad

2006-07-18T11:05:00.000-07:00

Ok - some good and bad news I think. sysinternals/winternals has been acquired by Microsoft.

The Good -- Microsoft should be able to incorporate much of the good work done by these guys into their products using them both to improve the products and give more built-in utilities to end users/administrators.

The Bad -- Hopefully Microsoft won't limit what these guys are able to provide to the community.

Another sad showing...but some improvement too

2006-07-12T09:16:00.000-07:00

Our softball team decided not to show last night again - until the 7th inning. We were down 14-4 in the bottom of the 7th and I think we added 6 runs to get back to 14-10 but that was it. No mas. We had quite a few errors in the field - especially throws that were bad or balls that weren't caught.

Lots of stuff in the news lately. Bombs in India, rocket launches blowing up, space shuttle launch and repair, Microsoft, Microsoft, Microsoft. I think its called the Argo - but I don't think it will take over the iPod. I'm fairly sure (prediction) that iPod is going to become the next Xerox or Kleenex or Rollerblade. All mp3 players are soon going to be called iPods as a generic. Just a gut feeling.

Fun

2006-06-27T14:29:00.000-07:00

So we've been playing with the Lazertag guns I spoke about previously. They are fun. I need to get a game together with real tactics and opponents who care about getting shot -- the kids don't want to play that way but just run up to me and shoot face to face. But its still fun with them.

Tyler is learning a bit about tactics and how to sneak up on people, using shields, shooting then hiding, etc.

I want to get out in the woods or a big space and have 24 people head-to-head - that would be fun. I'll have to get Paul and some of the others together for a game.

One of the best games we've done at home is having someone (or a team) hide in the fort and we wage an assault on the castle. Tyler really likes that one and he and Lori took me out a couple of times working as a team. Nice job.

Adwords

2006-06-23T09:58:00.000-07:00

hah - i put one long article on my blog - the barbecue story and all of a sudden Adwords is throwing up all kinds of barbecue ads. Weber's and accessories. That's cool - I dig Adwords.

It's a party

2006-06-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

Tonight we are having a camping sleepover for Ty's birthday party. We should have around 8 kids total. Last night we setup the tent in the backyard so it would be done and we wouldn't have a huge rush tonight before the party.

We haven't decided yet whether we are going to break out the deal-of-the-century lazertag guns or not. We got them for $5 each so I bought six of them. I can see the problem being that we don't have enough of them. We are going to see how the evening is going before we break them out.

Apparently yesterday morning during the US game, Tyler shouted his excitement when the US scored their goal. I think Bryce was still sleeping but I'm glad to see that he was paying attention and is excited about that kind of thing. Maybe he'll be a patriotic type of guy in the long run.

Nothing

2006-06-22T16:36:00.000-07:00

I have nothing to write about today. Nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing.

If the US World Cup team won I would. But still nothing... Maybe tonight.

Oh yeah - we are having a sleepover birthday party for Tyler tomorrow. I think there will be seven kids including Ty and Bryce in a tent in our backyard with yours truly. Looking forward to it at this point. Might be singing a different song Saturday morning. Or there may be some freshly dug holes in the backyard. hmmmmm

6-3 Win

2006-06-21T10:43:00.000-07:00

We, GBC softball team, had a softball game last night and it was a squeaker. Talk about low scoring -- the game was 3-2 after 5 innings and the other team tied it in the top of the 6th. We then put a move on in the bottom of the 6th scoring 3 runs taking a huge 6-3 lead. We closed off the top of the 7th with a 1-2-3 inning and took the win.

What scoring after our 28-12 game last week (we won by the way). This week was ugly but oh well - thats how it goes sometimes.

It's over

2006-06-20T15:33:00.000-07:00

The hockey season is now officially over. I'm so glad they don't pull a pro-bowl like the lame NFL. I am glad the Hurricanes won and the cup is now in the states for a year. I always like seeing what the players do with their travelling companion for the day. Some of them do really interesting things, have parties, visit back home, etc.

I'm still bummed that I missed recording the overtime, shorthanded win by the Oilers in game 5. I forgot to schedule the Tivo to record extra time so my recording ended in regulation. bummer.

We're back part 2

2006-06-20T08:25:00.000-07:00

Ok - so I forgot some info in my last post. During the surprise party we barely averted disaster. Conrad was q'ing and tried to move one of the barbecues when the legs fell off. He couldn't hold it and the thing went down on its side, spilling hot, ready to cook, charcoal. Unfortunately, this happened on the wood deck in the backyard in 90 degree weather.

Not knowing what to do, Conrad starting looking for help and ideas. I was in the vicinity, with freshly opened beverage in hand, and grabbed the insanely hot barbecue by the lone handle. Knuckle hair gone in milliseconds. Leg hair feels like its melting but I'm holding it because something tells me that hot charcoal and barbecue on the wood deck is a bad thing. Just for reference, this is a standard Weber barbecue (half sphere with tripod legs). I had most of the charcoal in the grill but I'm holding it with one hand so its at an angle, getting heavy, hot, and I still have my drink in my other hand.

Then I see the flames start on the deck. The problem is that its so hot and bright outside that they are hard to see and I think we could have been fooled pretty easily that there was no immediate threat. Blake starts thinking -- water, water, water -- and runs into the house to grab a bucket and get water. He gets some and douses the deck but I don't think we put it out. Finally we figure out that there is a hose around the side of the house so Blake puts on his firefighter gear, grabs the hose, and soaks everything just to be safe.

Somewhere in the middle of this Lori's aunt hands me pot holders from the kitchen, which end up saving my hands I think. I don't remember how I got them on -- someone must have put them on for me while I was holding the barbecue with my other hand. But I'm trapped by a hedge that has a small hole for people to walk through. The hedge is well over waist high so lifting this hot barbecue over with spilling, burning the bush, etc is not really doable one handed. I grab the grill with my other pot holder hand (no handle just the side of the barbecue) and lift it up and over the hedge to the brick/dirt below. More charcoal spilled on the ground in the process. One of the wheels is actually set down on a hot coal and we didn't realize for a couple minutes until the wheel was pretty well melted. I reassembled the legs so that the thing could stand on its own and felt relief.

Back to my drink. Ate some grub. What a party

We're back

2006-06-19T15:30:00.000-07:00

We were down in Ventura for the weekend. I was the distraction side of a surprise 70th birthday party. I think it went down well because my father in law had no idea it was coming. Help from Blake and Tyler during our round of golf made things easy.

We pulled the exploding golf ball trick on Bill. I had Tyler ask him if he could setup Bill's ball for him and Tyler pulled the ball switch. We video'd it so we could show everyone back at the party. We played at Soule Park golf course in Ojai which was not too expensive but in good condition. Don't tell anyone but I let Tyler drive the golf cart - a couple of times by himself. He did a great job.

The girls made homemade ice cream for us on Father's Day. Good stuff. Vanilla and mint and I ate a ton. Didn't even need to eat dinner when we got home because of all the ice cream. I think the used the Ben & Jerry's recipes for the ice cream which is good because there are the minimum number of ingredients required.

Hopping

2006-06-16T15:41:00.000-07:00

So I'm doing work for customer "X" and I've been playing a hopping game. I TSC to server A, then from server A I TSC to server B. On server B I run VMWare workstation and startup a server and client which then start chatting away and I can install whatever I want and not hose anything live.

I do my troubleshooting/fixes then shut it all down and sit back and think about the hops I've just taken. Could've made it more interesting by starting the VMs then running TSC to them but I just wanted to get my work done not have any fun...:)

Have I mentioned that VMWare is really, really cool? I'm guessing that Microsoft's version works pretty well too but sometimes you have to go with Microsoft and sometimes against. I'm not biased.

I'm not 1337 but I can spell it

2006-06-15T16:25:00.000-07:00

Learn how to speak 1337 and /\/\0ar3.

I'm not sure that I can write it very well but I don't usually have trouble reading it. Lot's of it is just common sense stuff - more and more you have to have context or experience in trying to decipher it. Too much effort to be 1337

Google Spreadsheets - Sneak Peek

2006-06-13T11:31:00.000-07:00

Google Spreadsheets - Sneak Peek Another Google innovation. They continue to push things in new directions and places. I didn't sign up because I don't have time to check out another new thing. But it seems like a good idea. The security issue comes up again and how willing people will be to put sensitive information into a file stored online.

I bet its slick though.

Sleepy

2006-06-12T10:58:00.000-07:00

Ok - the game is over and the boys looked asleep. No teamwork, no effort. blah. Maybe this will give them a wakeup call they need and they'll get it together for the rest of the tournament. 3-0 with maybe one or two real scoring chances.

Good game for Czechoslovakia. As I've watched this weekend it seems there are a lot of yellow cards and because they carry over in Group play I'm wondering what is going to happen in the next two games. Lots of players have one yellow already. Could make it interesting I guess.

Great game

2006-06-11T20:20:00.000-07:00

My brother was here for the weekend and we watched quite a bit of World Cup. By far our favorite game was between Trinidad & Tobago and Sweden. T&T were not supposed to do well as this was their first World Cup and they were supposed to get killed by everyone -- Sweden included. They pulled off a 0-0 tie through the first half after some great play by their goalie Shaka Hislop.

Almost immediately into the second half one of their players received a red card and we thought - oh no, games over now. But they held on and we were cheering for a tie. They had a few chances where we thought they were going to score but it didn't happen. I think the stadium would have exploded if they had scored in that second half down a man. What a great game.

Imagination

2006-06-08T13:45:00.000-07:00

This animation is quite inventive. Someone has both a bit of time and imagination in order to come up with something like this. It reminds me a bit of the stick figure war drawings I used to do when I was a kid. I wasn't good at them but I'd draw guys shooting at each other, helicopters, planes, hills, valleys, etc. Oh yeah and tanks -- lots of tanks.

Who knew stick figures could do so much?

GBC Blogs

2006-06-08T00:00:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to setup a blog for GBC so that pastors and staff can post info, mini-sermons, etc.

Canes

2006-06-07T23:02:00.000-07:00

Watched the Oilers Canes game again tonight. What a stomping. Since Rolosson is gone it seemed they just didn't put up much of a fight - or the Hurricanes are just in full stride and can't be stopped. We'll see what game three brings but if the Oilers don't get a fire lit under them they don't have a chance.

I was fooled by the Doug Weight goal. I was convinced he kicked that thing in and I'm certain it would have been ruled that way if he hadn't tipped it with his stick just before it went in the goal. Only on the slow motion, from the top replay could you see the imperceptible tip. Not sure how the ruling would have gone if they didn't have instant replay.

World Cup 2006

2006-06-07T20:43:00.000-07:00

I'm ready for some real football. Here's the schedule on ESPN so we can all remember when to watch/record the games. Football is so much more exciting than the American version. Watching what some of these guys can do just amazes me - like Ronaldinho, Donovan, etc. GOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLL!

Ok - just looked at the schedule closer and noticed that we start with two games Friday, then three games per day until the following week when we bump up to four per day. Stays at four until round two where we go back to two per day. The Tivo is now scheduled to record all games for the first four days (at least through Monday's games). Something strange going on with the schedule though. Everything was kosher between the online ESPN schedule and the Tivo schedule. The games on Monday (including the US game) do not match the ESPN schedule. Oh well, I just scheduled them all to record and since I'll be working Monday I'll have to watch them all Monday night. It's a good thing that Lost and all the other series are over now (except Battlestar Galactica should be starting again).

Another bird

2006-06-07T10:23:00.000-07:00

There was a story about a Triple A game where a bird was struck by the pitcher during a pitch. Reminds me of the Randy Johnson incident. This bird seems to be obliterated. Like a down pillow exploding.

Technology

2006-06-07T10:20:00.000-07:00

I was checking my standard tech sites and ran across some new video cards. I can't believe, really can't believe, that there are 1 GB video cards out now. That's more memory than in most desktops. I don't know how good the cards are -- obviously quantity of memory is not the only defining characteristic of a card -- but still.

I wonder if you can run apps in your video card memory. Let the processor offload some memory from standard RAM to the video card. I wonder if there are any benefits to making some of the memory accesses parallel.

Stanley 2006 - Game 1

2006-06-07T10:17:00.000-07:00

What a great game the other night between the Oilers and Canes. I, like many others I'm sure, thought the game was over when the Oilers were up 3-0. But as everyone knows you never give up on a game especially in the cup playoffs.

I really love the playoffs because of the extra intensity put into the game. One of my favorite moments was when one of the Canes players, Wesley I think, was injured during a 5-3 powerplay but stayed active in the kill until he could get off. Had to go to the locker room but was back out on the ice within 5 minutes. Guts

Sucks for the Oilers that Rolosson is out for the rest of the playoffs. I'm not sure they have much of a chance now cause he was really holding things down for them.

Stealth Wing

2006-06-06T11:54:00.000-07:00

These are pretty cool. Remind me of something we saw (I think) in old GI Joe cartoons when growing up. I'm glad they brought up the issue of disposal. Not sure what they will do with them once they land. Destroy them, bury them, let the enemy find them and use them? hmmm

The Final Cut (2004)

2006-06-05T14:39:00.000-07:00

The Final Cut (2004)

I watched this movie last night with Lori. I thought the concept was intriguing once I got to the social implications of recording peoples lives. How does the "cutter" get to pick and choose what to show in a rememory? And how do you keep that profession honest?

I thought the movie ended in decent way but it was a quick ending. Maybe a bit more wrapup would have been nice. I liked a lot of the software ideas they used in their editing software (The Guillotine). A bit futurustic as far as capabilities go but why not? Something to look forward to.

What is Google doing?

2006-06-05T08:53:00.002-07:00

After logging into my Google homepage this morning there was a new link at the bottom talking about download Google Pack. So I clicked it to find out what was there. Wow! The Google Pack is a download of somewhere around 12 software packages (most of which I already have). One of the interesting pieces is that Norton Antivirus is included with a six month subscription.

I'm curious where Google is going. They have been giving away some great free software over the past few years and it keeps getting better. This seems like another step but I'm not sure what the end result/goal is.

I haven't downloaded the entire pack because I'm not sure I want the whole thing. I'll have to think about this for a bit.

spiraling

2006-06-02T16:17:00.000-07:00

I'm getting tired of all the complaining over on the boards for LOST. Too many people calling others NOOBs, too many coming up with theories that were thought of early last season, fighting, fighting, fighting. Oh yeah - and the millions of OT posts. People don't have anything better to do I guess.

The boards used to be a good place to find info but I'm not so sure anymore. Too much wading to find decent info. Time to look elsewhere...

Hockey

2006-06-02T16:08:00.000-07:00

So I really enjoy playing hockey (inline not ice) and we have a good group of people playing during our lunch on Mondays and Thursdays - weather permitting. If you are in the San Luis Obispo area and would like to play hockey with us feel free. We usually play from 12 - 1 but I'm guessing that during the summer the number of people will increase (high schoolers) and there may be some extended playtime.

We are even organized enough to have a group on Yahoo where we get a rough count of the number of people who are going to play - helps us save gas and prep time if we don't have enough people to play. Join our group, or just come out and play.

Maybe one of these days I'll get organized enough to take some pics during hockey and post them.

Under Construction

2006-06-02T15:11:00.000-07:00

My mom and stepdad are in the process of building their new house in Ashland Oregon. My stepdad (Dick Sweet) is a GLM and has installed a webcam to broadcast the entire process. The house is really moving along as the trusses are now being put in place. Check it out.

GBC

2006-06-02T14:24:00.000-07:00

GBC is Grace Bible Church in Arroyo Grande, CA. Wea are pretty involved at GBC -- the kids in children's ministries, Lori with women's ministries, I help with tech stuff and the computer systems.

The environment at GBC is great for just about everyone (I'm sure there are some who don't feel like they fit in - but that's hard to accomplish for any organization.) The mission statement is "Love God and Love one another as we bring Christ to our world."

I had a great opportunity to be involved with a missions team a few weeks ago on a trip to Albania. I have learned quite a bit about Albania and hope to share more of it here in the next few weeks.

The Favorite Uncle

2006-06-02T14:08:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure Uncle Andy is their favorite uncle because he is a firefighter. He is a firefighter in the Sacramento area. Not sure if he is permanently stationed yet.

He also has an emergency responder business called Sierra Fire Rescue targeted toward the racing community.

My kids are happy sometimes...

2006-06-02T12:25:00.000-07:00

Here's Bryce and I having a good time. We were actually up in Ashland Oregon visiting my mom.

Check out the corporate site

2006-06-02T12:12:00.000-07:00

I don't maintain this one either but it is where I work so I thought I send out a link to it.

We make ozone generators used in water and air applications. If you own a spa and you have ozone then there is a good chance that you have one of our units. I've been with the company now for almost two years as the IT Manager.

A project I've been helping with

2006-06-02T12:11:00.000-07:00

Here's a project I've been helping with. I'm not really a web designer but understand html and all the underlying goodies well enough that I can enable others to do it. Learning some stuff about AbleCommerce in the process and teaching others about CSS, templating, etc.

LOST

2006-05-30T12:10:00.000-07:00

I'm addicted to LOST. I'm not sure why I like it so much other than that it is a mystery and has a great way of telling a story. I love the flashbacks and the way the flashbacks tie into the current story. I have gone through my own set of theories just as everyone else has but haven't come up with one that I'm totally set on yet.

My friend Bill and I chat about pretty much all week long (too bad its summer now and there won't be any new episodes). The theories are out of control with quite a variety. I admit that I've had my own theories that have been quickly shot down. My current theory is that the name of the show is the biggest clue. I don't think it relates to the people being Lost but having Lost something personal to each of them (think Hurley and his sanity). Not sure I can give examples for everyone but its a theory.