Emptying out

Well the (old) house is starting to look a bit empty. Erik and I took two loads over yesterday evening and I've got another load ready to go including dressers and chairs. I've got to go into sorting mode again and so the 10 bags of trash are going to grow this evening.

I did the Op Center this afternoon and I've got it again tomorrow afternoon. I talked to the fence guy and he comes out Wednesday evening. Now I'm off to the post office to put in the change of address, then home to pack more.

Wow, blogs galore

I was in the Op Center this afternoon so I got stuff done and was then poking around. Among other things I found the blogs of the SWG guild. Man these guys worry about women a bunch. Of course I've had so much luck myself I've got no room to talk but at least I've learned not to get bummed about it.

The sinus thing is still here and still reminding me every few hours that it's here. Drugs man, more drugs.

Wonder when Erik & Mary get home so I can borrow the pickup. Need to do some heavy duty loads over to the new place since I only have a week left. Prolly going to take time off all week. The temptation will be to not play Galaxies when I should be packing. Don't feel like doing much in there anyway, factory jobs to finish and product to deliver. Damn sounds like RL!

Well op center shift is over so back downstairs.

Whoa

AB has a new rant up about fast food.

"Burgers don’t kill people.
People kill people.
Don’t be one of them."

Hehe. Of course with half the kitchen at the new place and all of the food at the old ... ;-P

Arggghhhhh

Don't you hate it when you get a sinus infection and they're draining into your throat? I caught something over the weekend I think and yesterday I woke up after not sleeping much. Yech. And after railing at the group back in March about staying home when you're sick and not coming in to infect the rest of us, I figured I'd better listen to myself and I stayed home.

Didn't get much done. Played some Galaxies, packed some things, threw a bunch of stuff out including a pile of old video tapes I hadn't watched in so long they were coated in dust. More of that coming up since the lease deadline is approaching.

Back at work today since I was feeling better this morning but now the headache is back along with lots more drainage. May go home.

Pictures

Well the Op Center is slow this afternoon - or more accurately I finally solved a problem I've been working on for nearly a week - so I worked on a bunch of picture sites.

http://www.missouri.edu/~heivilinj/4M/
http://www.missouri.edu/~heivilinj/wedding/
http://www.missouri.edu/~heivilinj/car/
http://www.missouri.edu/~heivilinj/rough-riders.html
http://www.missouri.edu/~heivilinj/house/

There are some blurbs at the beginning of some of these. Enjoy.

Well, Jeff and Laura

Are safely married now, before she could get him in any trouble. Well I suppose that's a misnomyer. They've been dating for four years so if she was going to get him into trouble it would have happened by now. The wedding was wonderful, they held it at the Missouri Botanical Gardens in the Lehmann Rose Garden with the reception at the Spink Pavilion.

The whole gang was there (well except John, who had a writing conference in Maryland) including Pete, who flew in from Norway! I got all weepy but I should have more pictures up this afternoon. I was in a monkey suit as a usher (and I apparently ush very well!). We did some goofy stuff when the photographer was shooting the groomsmen and I want to see those pics.

Next Up ...

Tricia called me yesterday afternoon (she thought I'd forgotten Nick's birthday but it's been catch-up big time since I got back) and mentioned (among other things) that the pix here didn't work. What happened is that Ethan in the cube across from me showed me a nifty little tool to make a web based photo album. You add the pics to a list, add captions if you want, adjust display characteristics (including resizing them and making thumbnails), set a location (and since I have my bengal space samba mapped it could save them directly to the web), click a button and viola, instant photo album including navigation links. Pretty slick.

But in the process of it all the photos were moved to a "photo" folder so the link was broken. It's working again. I also played around with it a bit since Brand said we looked like the "Rough Riders". I'm having that one printed out and framed to give to him.

Back from the mountains of the moon

At least that's what it felt like trying to breath the first day. But it evened out (meaning it didn't get any easier but we got used to it a little) and we had a blast. There are a bunch of pictures up on one of my sites but the best one is below.



From left to right is: Jason Werner, Aaron Sapp, Jack Holcomb, Jeff Barber (the groom), Chris (Jeff's cousin, I need to get his last name) and me. I'd like it noted that Jason was riding a horse named "Sleepy" and he had, in fact, had trouble getting up that morning. Arriving in Crested Butte at 0230 had nothing to do with it however! ;-P

I finished putting up some of the pictures. All of them will be restricted in distribution since I maintain my reputation as a good photog by junking the bad pictures so all anyone ever sees are the good ones!

"Tomorrow, tomorrow"

Okay so I can't sing. But tomorrow we leave for the "Macho Man Mountain Madness", as Jeff's bachelor party has become know. It's supposed to be about a 15 hour drive, 1,050 miles from here to Crested Butte (Jason or Jack get to drive when we go over Monarch Pass!). Friday morning we go horseback riding then play something in the afternoon with a campfire version of our "Brotherhood game" as it's become know. Saturday we're going white water rafting with some more gaming and then Sunday we go hiking and/or downhill mountain biking. Then we load up the van and drive back here with his wedding next weekend.

I'm supposed to be an usher for it but had no idea until last night when (time-wise) the wedding was, the rehearsal dinner or anything. Now I've got a better idea and I leave at 4 to get measured, then take the data with me to give to him (he's now in charge of this I gather).

Not moving enough

I worked on Saturday and on Monday on moving. Saturday I got one big load moved and a big-screen TV sized box of junk to throw out. Sunday I got about four more bags ready for the trash. Yesterday I only got 1 1/2 loads moved but got 10 bags of trash there (pretty much everything left in the garage - they had to move quick) and 9 at the old place.

But it still doesn't feel like I've got enough time. This weekend is taken up with Jeff's bachelor party in Colorado and next with the wedding itself. That leaves the last weekend of the month. So I am going to have to take at least one load every workday evening. And I'll probably have to take the last week off work too (not that that is a bad thing!).

"AT&T Customer Service"

The new picture in the dictionary under the term "oxymoron"!

I stopped using my home phone for long distance when I got a cell phone awhile back (several years). However they still charged me monthly about two dollars and thirty cents. Given that it probably cost them quite a bit more than this to process my two dollar check every month I continued to pay, getting a chuckle every month. Then shortly into this year the charged jumped up to nearly twelve dollars a month, for basically nothing. This wasn't quite so funny so early in April I called to have my AT&T "service" cancelled. It very nearly took an Act of Congress to get it separated and no less than five attempts by the "technician" to sell me other AT&T plans. I was given a "confirmation number" and told I had to contact my local phone company to confirm my disconnection from AT&T. I thought I was done. However in June and July (and possibly in May, I don't have that bill with me right now) I was sent a bill. On the 18th of June I called AT&T "Customer Service" to find out what the problem was. I was told that it was a billing error and that I would need to speak with someone in billing. They then dumped me back into AT&T's monumental(ly frustrating) menu and I was promptly lost somewhere.

I got another bill this month telling me I hadn't paid my previous bill. So I called again and after nearly an hour I finally actually did talk to a billing specialist (after getting put back into the menu three times and talking to two different people explaining the situation in horrendous detail each time). She told me that my termination occured two days into the billing cycle and they didn't prorate the charges so I had to pay the $11.18. Thus my proclamation that "AT&T 'Customer Service'" has replaced "Military Intelligence" as the Most Ironic Oxymoron Ever(tm).

STOP IT!!

I heard on the radio yesterday morning that some 20% of people who receive spam emails respond to them and buy something. So it's their fault that these spammers proliferate. Although one of the DJs did opine that this survey (which was done by WIRED which I don't consider to be very technical despite their claims, nor possess very much "journalistic integrity" - whatever that's worth these days) did cover eleven countries so it's possible that many of these responses were from people who don't have local sources for some of these products.

But really, how many times do you need to refinance your house and how "big" do you really need to be?