Category: General

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Back On-line

This morning I got my cable modem back on-line. Obviously the DynDNS update completed successfully or you wouldn’t be visiting. Wednesday DirecTV will be out to hook up a new dish and the last of the utilities will be transferred.

We are living out of boxes for now. Moving is just plain painful. But my new office is a huge 16’x18′. It’s the biggest room in the house, Connor’s new playroom being second at 16 feet square. The boys get the big playrooms. Mom gets the downstairs. I made her kitchen look like a Starbucks so she should be in heaven.

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Site Down

This blog’s going down this afternoon and may not be back up until Wednesday or Thursday of next week when Time Warner gets my cable service moved to our new house.

This will be the only set back I’ve experienced in hosting my own site.

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Look who’s two!

imageOn Friday the deed was done, or at least transferred. Amy and I now own 1404 Raybon Drive in Wendell, NC. but we didn’t get to spend much time out there this weekend because our little man Connor turned two the very next day! And his party was better than any I ever had when growing up. All his little friends were there – Andrew, Maeve, Charlie, Megan, Skylar, Hannah, Jacob and plenty of adults. All of the food was eaten – every last thing.

imageConnor was wiped out by this afternoon. He had his party on Saturday and explored his new backyard all morning on Sunday. And now comes the fun part. As soon as he gets up from his nap we’re heading to Home Depot for paint and about four million other things. Tomorrow I’ll spend the whole day painting and then I’ll be off to buy a new refrigerator and microwave to install over the stove.

By Friday we have to be moved out of the house in Raleigh. Buying new furniture will have to wait until next weekend. Today it dawned on me that this is the first time I have taken off work in over four years that hasn’t been medically related.

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More pics of the house.

Here are a few more pictures of the place we’ll call home at the end of next month. There’s a lot of painting and wallpaper removal to take care of. I might even take off the last week of September to get it all done if I can squeeze in the time between projects at work. Right now I’m slammed on all fronts. But there is more good news this week… Amy got a job! She starts Monday in the claims department of an insurance company I can’t think of the name of right now.

Kitchen, Living Room:
imageimage

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We bought a house!

imageIt’s been 10 days since my last entry because I have been extremely busy this month, just like in July. Our offer on this house in the town of Wendell was accepted last night. I searched all over the Internet and discovered you can buy A LOT more house for your money outside of Raleigh/Cary/Apex. In short, once the deal goes through on this property I will have saved almost $60K over any comparable house I’ve seen in Raleigh.

We’ll have half an acre of yard and 2200 square feet of living space. The first floor has three bedrooms, two full bathrooms, kitchen, living room and dining room. The upstairs has two 15×16 bonus rooms and a full bathroom. It’s located about 10 minutes from where Dillon Supply will be located after the move in December (so I’ll be just as close to work as I am now). The best part is that there will be a lot of yard space between us and our neighbors, something unheard of in Raleigh subdivisions.

It’s not a done deal but if the contract goes through we’ll be closing on September 23rd (one day before Connor’s birthday). I told Amy that once we move it’s the last time we’re going to do it for many years. Later we can add a kid or two to this house and still have enough room to keep our sanity. I just don’t know how I’m going to afford to furnish it.

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July Recap

imageThis month was hotter and busier than any I can remember. At work, at home, even at my parents house something was going on all the time. We started off by taking Connor to see fireworks for the first time. He jumped straight into Amy’s lap when he heard the first explosion and didn’t get out until they were over. But he liked them. And I managed to get out of the fairground parking in under 45 minutes so I didn’t mind it much either.

The weekend following the 4th we threw my mom a surprise birthday party. Amy and Mary Kay organized it and had well over 50 people there. When mom walked around her house into the back yard she was genuinely surprised. It was a well kept secret. Then later that week I had a Colonoscopy.

The next weekend I lost my wedding ring in the deep end of a diving pool. I noticed it missing from my hand that night after we got home. I went straight back the following morning but despite all my self-proclaimed genius I did not bring a snorkel, goggles – nothin’. But I did spot the ring on the bottom.

First Amy dove to try to get it. She felt around on the bottom but couldn’t grab it. I watched it drift around on the bottom for about ten minutes and told Amy to go get a mask. The trip took her about thirty minutes. During that time a bunch of other people got in the pool and stirred the water. I lost site of the ring and never saw it again. I wished I had never seen it on the bottom to begin with.

imageLater on in the month Connor took a couple of trips to Pullen Park to ride the choo-choo, boats and merry-go-round. Last weekend when we went I saw a guy I know on the choo-choo with his daughter, Ava. Dawson Roark, if I remember correctly. The last time I saw him was last year in St. Louis at the Prophet21 convention. So we talked about work and P21 for around thirty minutes.

Speaking of work; this month Dillon Supply officially moved the forklift division across the street in downtown Raleigh so I turned up a new segment of our wide area network. Very smoothly if I might add – 1 minute 45 seconds total down time on the core router; a Cisco 3745 which now supports three T1 circuits (two are bonded) and a 45Mbps DS3. Tomorrow morning I’m installing the first component of our new storage area network, a 1TB NetApp FAS3000.

It’s been a helluva month.

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When a hoax is not a joke.

This is a legitimate, safe trend started by the East Anglian Ambulance Service:

Paramedics will turn to a victim’s cell phone for clues to that person’s
identity. You can make their job much easier with a simple idea that they
are trying to get everyone to adopt: ICE.

ICE stands for In Case of Emergency. If you add an entry in the contacts
list in your cell phone under ICE, with the name and phone no. of the
person that the emergency services should call on your behalf, you can save
them a lot of time and have your loved ones contacted quickly. It only
takes a few moments of your time to do.

Paramedics know what ICE means and they look for it immediately. ICE your
cell phone NOW!

Then some narrow minded idiot tried to ruin a good thing.

Quickly following on the heels of advisories to add “ICE” entries to mobile phones were hoax warnings that doing so would trigger premium charges thanks to malicious text messages or viruses randomly sent to phones to scan for such entries:

“To all those who received a copy of the e-mail recommending that the word ICE be added to their phones address book (In case of emergency contact). I can not say for sure that information I have received this morning is legitimate, but better to warn you all.

I am very sorry to report that some small minded idiot has created a text message that is being sent out randomly to mobile phone users, this text has a programme included that searches your phones address book for the word “ICE” or “I.C.E” and if found, you are charged for a premium rate message.”

The instigator tried to turn ICE contacts into a hoax.

Matt Ware, spokesman for the East Anglian Ambulance Service, asked people to ignore the hoax email.

“I have been inundated with emails and phone calls from people worried that, having put ICE into their mobiles, they are now going to be charged for the privilege,” he added.

“We would like to assure people that that’s not the case. Whoever began this second email chain is obviously a malicious person with way too much time on their hands.”

The bottom line:

No one can send a text message to anything but your cell phone number. A text message cannot do a reverse lookup for a contact name in your address book. It’s safe to add an ICE contact to your cell phone.

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A lesson from the Pantera

image What model year would you believe this car to be? I saw my first Detomaso Pantera for sale at Al Smith Buick/Dodge in Raleigh back in the late 80’s. It was $68,000. I thought it was a new exotic car I had never heard of. In fact it was a 1971 model, just like the one in this photo. Most people have never heard of these cars. That’s unfortunate for the Honda Civic go-cart kids who think 260hp is a lot. These Pantera’s typically pack between 400 to 700 horses. The only thing new that can compete is the upcoming Mustang Shelby Cobra.

I read this week that the most stolen car last year was the Acura Integra “probably because of it’s powerful engine.” What a joke. When I was in high school (yes, back in the day) we had Mustang LX 5.0’s and Formula Firebird 350’s that would smoke all these little rice traps right off the lot – no modification necessary. If someone actually took the time to modify one it would become illegal in most states. I feel bad for the kids that slap a go cart muffler on an Acura and throw a stupid looking carrying handle on the back. Here’s a hint: you look gay. Stop.