August 31, 2004 Tuesday
...feel tension as an opportunity for courage. What could be braver than deciding without all the data? As Captain Kirk challenged Mr. Spock in Star Trek IV: "Guess."
August 30, 2004 Monday
As promised, I have some pictures from Madeline's birthday party. These are from my phone. I may have more from other sources later....
August 29, 2004 Sunday
I have passed something from my father to my son. We were racing Hot Wheels down the driveway this evening. The surface seems pretty smooth until you try running it with quarter inch high wheels. The relative bumpiness makes for...
August 28, 2004 Saturday
Dad and I got a round of disc golf in this afternoon. It was about a hundred degrees and nearly windless for the duration of our round. If I remember correctly, I was around six over. Dad did well, too....
Nearly thirty people were at our house today during Madeline's party. We had hamburgers and cake and ice cream. She got a lot of clothes and a couple of toys. I'll be sure to post some pictures later....
August 27, 2004 Friday
Kevin's Granny brought him home yesterday. She's done nothing this week but play with him. I walked in the door and said, "There's my boy!" He replied, "Daddy will you take me to the train store?" I got back at...
I had an interesting conversation with my real boss. She used to be my manager once removed, but both of us have moved and she's now my boss's peer. Nevertheless, I take most of my issues to her. I'm trying...
August 26, 2004 Thursday
I added title attributes to all the links on the main page. This makes it even dicier to keep valid XHTML but I like the "tool tips." Hover and enjoy....
August 25, 2004 Wednesday
I spent over an hour on the phone today with manasclerk. I needed to talk about "Weird" Al and books and comics. For most of the time, though, I used him. There were issues on my mind concerning the Process...
It turns out that the vendor for the chargeoff system was just quoting us a first installment price. After they added in all the things we wanted from them the price came to $12,000. So my mere existence was only...
I put the question of the noncommunicative computers to Lyle the self employed tech consultant and fellow elder at church. He asked if I was running a firewall. Yeah, Zone Alarm. I shut down Zone Alarm and the computers talked...
August 24, 2004 Tuesday
I switched the Linksys for a DLink and it's doing the same thing. I'm now beginning to suspect the OS. The laptop is running XP Home. Is that disabled from workgroup computing? I've got a couple things to try before...
August 23, 2004 Monday
I spent today in training. The folks were teaching some process improvement vocabulary, tools, and methodology. There was some value in what they taught, but I felt it missed some of the larger issues. They warned about people holding out...
August 22, 2004 Sunday
I tried to connect the laptop to the desktop to share the printer today. The desktop would see the laptop, but the laptop wouldn't see the desktop. Apparently the good folks at Linksys designed it that way. So, I'll return...
August 21, 2004 Saturday
Kevin left with his Granny today for Comanche. They're coming back on Thursday. Strange to have him gone. We felt free to move about the city tonight. No one there to tell us "I don't want to go there! I...
August 20, 2004 Friday
I finally got the main page of the blog to be valid. I'm probably not that far from being valid as Strict XHTML, but I'm not going there yet. Mostly since this doesn't really buy me anything anyway. I mean...
August 19, 2004 Thursday
"You saved the bank ten thousand dollars." My boss went on to explain how merely being willing to do my job had an easily measurable result. Five or six years ago a consultant created an application for the overdraft department...
Posted to
Work Life at
6:09 PM
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August 18, 2004 Wednesday
Since Lexie's fall she hasn't been able to do a lot of work around the house. I was pretty busy Saturday night. My mom came in early Sunday afternoon. Today she left shortly after Lexie's mom got here. Mom was...
August 17, 2004 Tuesday
Kevin started school this week just like Lexie's students. He's in the four-year-old classroom (though that birthday is some three months away). The big new thing in our life is homework. He now has an assignment to be done...
August 16, 2004 Monday
Saturday morning while Lexie was working at school, the kids and I went to the park. Madeline was happy to be pushed in the swing, but Kevin just wasn't very interested in slides and climbing. So he golfed with me....
August 15, 2004 Sunday
Cute movie. More fun than A Knights Tale which we watched earlier this week. The jousting scenes in the Heath Ledger vehicle were pretty nifty and so it probably bears up better under repeat viewings. Since I'm not a teenage...
August 14, 2004 Saturday
Lexie got her room put together as planned this morning. As she was leaving, she fell down the stairs. Nothing's broken, but she's sprained it badly. She will be on crutches for a few days. This will make the first...
August 13, 2004 Friday
Kevin got a virus that's going around the day care. The symptoms are fever, vomiting and diarrhea. We're two for three. No puking.
August 12, 2004 Thursday
I finished listening to this short book a few days ago. It was written nearly fifteen years ago when it was still possible that some readers might not be familiar with Nintendo. It was moderately entertaining. I got the biggest...
Posted to
Books at
9:03 PM
August 11, 2004 Wednesday
I just came across the information that the book for year six at Hogwart's has a name. It is to be entitled "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince." I have to say that I dearly hope that Harry will...
Posted to
Books at
9:23 PM
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August 10, 2004 Tuesday
I've been messing with Index Server for IIS today. For some reason on the development server it ignores all the FrontPage extension directories (/_vti_cnf). On the production server it indexes them. I googled. I searched support.microsoft.com. I'm not getting anywhere...
Posted to
Work Life at
9:55 PM
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August 9, 2004 Monday
Lexie's new laptop arrived today. She is very distressed to find that it has no floppy drive. "Everything I have is on floppies!" I tried to explain the little USB flash drives, but she protested that her students brought their...
August 8, 2004 Sunday
Everybody was someone else at church today. I think we had more visitors than members present. Gordon, the pastor, was away at a family reunion. Five of a usual seven member music team were out. It was really sort of...
August 7, 2004 Saturday
Sarah, Rob's youngest, celebrated her first birthday today. Her actual birth date was on the second. My folks got into town just in time to go to with us to the party. Then we all came home and napped. Lex...
August 6, 2004 Friday
It turned out not to be that hard when I took the right approach. The rate information was stored in packed number format in the large character field. I ran my query on the AS/400 to avoid the EBCDIC to...
Posted to
Work Life at
3:58 PM
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August 5, 2004 Thursday
Trying to do a little homegrown middleware, I want to make a single entry point for our rates. Right now the Assets and Liabilities Committee (ALCo) determines what we will pay for deposit products. And a couple other guys determine...
Posted to
Work Life at
9:58 PM
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August 4, 2004 Wednesday
We had a wonderful time of sharing with the church people tonight. Our somewhat annual talent show. This is our community. Lillian bounced. Up and down a hundred times on her pogo stick. If your church doesn't have room for...
On the way home from Comanche Kevin drew this car on his MagnaDoodle. Okay, I added the wheels and told him how to draw the driver's dome. But he did the rest! I thought it was pretty cool, so...
August 3, 2004 Tuesday
Mom wants to know why I haven't written about the beach trip. No good reason I can think of. It was relaxing and uneventful. Just like a vacation should be. We had a nice time. Kevin is still talking...
My HP Laserjet 5L is misbehaving and my Scanjet 3300C woudn't talk to my computer. So today we dropped $250 at Best Buy for a scanner/copier/printer combo. It was pretty easy to set up. My only issue has been that...
August 2, 2004 Monday
The Process Improvement Commitee met for the first time today. So far we've managed to begin a debate about the value of a team studying processes versus creating a culture where innovations "bubble up" from the worker bees. I think...
August 1, 2004 Sunday
Lexie had pretty much given up on going to see her mother before going back to school. I was encouraging her to go at every turn, but with the kids a bit sick and so much to prepare for the...