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September 22 Is it Time? I
ran in to an old friend I hadn't seen for a couple years the other
night. I hate to say it, but he's one of the kids I'd pretty much given
up on. He seemed like he was one of those people that was going to
continue to make bad decision until it killed him. He didn't look well.
I'm more than twice his age, and he looked like he felt 20 yrs older
than me. He's been through some rough times--much of his own
doing. He told me he's quit drugs and had been out of rehab since
March. He's working. He actually sounds like he has some hope now and
wants to better himself. He always was interested in computers and was
asking for all my numbers and email addresses. We stood and talked for
a long while.I never was able to help him much before. Looks
like he had hit rock-bottom. I'm just wondering.......is it time?? Can
I help him now?? We may soon find out.September 14 Little Bear Came Home I found a young man about 8 months ago going through a rough time with his family. He'd grown up w/ a grandmother in a rural area. She passed away and he was thrown into his mother's household in suburbia. His mother never understood or accepted who he was and never supported his emotional needs. His stepfather was physically abusive or ignored him. School was like a prison to him. His only support at home was his sister. Teddy finally decided he had to get out. After trying to find a place everywhere else, he finally asked me if he could move in here. I can't turn down a kid in trouble. Teddy has been here almost 2 months and has been a joy every second. He has found peace, happiness and new adventure he had sorely missed. We're gonna have a great time. Little Bear has been living here for about 3 months now. Rarely does a day pass when my little brother fails to amaze me (or at least amuse me!). Little Bear has been my "organic entertainment center" since the 1st day here. He's really taken a shine to my new digital camera. It's been getting much more of a workout here lately. This morning he was still awake as the sun began to rise. Hearing me rustling around below he bounded down the stairs wearing nothing ut a thin sheet around his waist. The sky was as red as fire as the sun rose. and he grabbed the camera to get some photos. Out the back door he leaped bare-footed still clad only in the thin sheet, scaring the dogs as much as they scared him. A bit later he returned with his collection of images and the story of his short adventure. Evidently the dogs were curious about his choice of wardrobe this morning. If you knew these idiot dogs the story would be even funnier. They only left him alone after he triggered the flash in their direction. My big male dog attempted to remove the sheet as he was taking pictures. Oh what a sight that had to be. I could just imagine him chasing the dogs bare naked with the camea in hand. I only wish I'd had the other camera ready! Thankfully nature is so close around the house that the neighbors can't see much of what goes on! Moving out of the city here where nature is a LOT closer has done wonders for the kid (and for me, too). He makes new discoveries every day, and always has a story to tell me when I get home. July 22 I'm back!Well, kids, it's been far too long since my last real entry here. Life has just become so busy and complex, it's been really difficult to find time and keep things up to date. For those that I've had the pleasure to meet and appreciate through this medium, let me assure you that I still think about you often. Maybe one of these days I'll invent a direct cyberlink and be able to blog directly from my brain. lol OMG, that's a scarey thought.
I've got several things on my agenda I hope to write about here soon. I have a new housemate and another o the way. They've brought with them a whole new circle of friends, acquaintances and stories. My son recently remarried and has a new, prebuilt family (hope this one lasts longer than the last!). My daughter is expecting again. This will be my 4th grandson. Egad, I feel old! Lost Boy and Erik have moved around a bit, but they're still close to me. I still work for the Army, although in a different capacity. Mom just turned 75 a couple weeks ago. We had a big party!
I finally took the plunge and bought a serious digital camera. Oh, oh, and I've got a lot more pics to post! You'll see them soon--time permitting.
OK, so now I've gotta run and get the day started. Make some green tea, get cleaned up and face the world again! I hope you all are having a great weekend!
~~ The old Gnome December 18 Reindeer GamesUnder normal circumstances you would expect security guard to have very limited semse of humor while on the job. I had an encounter at the gate Friday morning. It was so funny I just had to share it with you:
I came in the Brandenburg Gate as I always do in the morning. The guard was obviously in a rather seasonalby festive mood. He notice the muddy paw prints on the hood of my red car, and then looked at me with a twisted grin. My 1st thought was that I was goig to be pulled aside and my car search again. He looked at the car, then back at me and said, "Noticed the paw prints on the car. Reindeer?" It took me a couple seconds, but he was obviously making a round-about reference to me looking like Santa Claus. I laughed all the way in to Burger King that morning! Is it any wonder why I like this job?? November 26 Eric's a daddy!Salem Dawn was born on or about 8 September 2005. She's now a beatiful litlle 11 pounder with blue-green eyes and strawberry-blond hair. The world is a little bit better place. Eric didn't know until just a few days ago. He's very excited, and I'm very happy for him. I'll spare you the details here. I hope to get to see Salem tomorrow and hope to have pics soon. I'm still in shock, too. I feel like Eric has made me a grandpa all over again!
A long time ago I told Eric I wanted to see a pup out of him before I died. Little did we know that was in-process when I told him that. Now I guess I don't have an excuse. Eric emailed tonight and told me if I talk any more about dieing that he was gonna stick me in a home! lol I like that little brat. Now I have to tell Lost Boy I want to see a pup out of him before I go! Maybe I'll tell Eric I want to see a son out of him. I'll figure some way for an extended stay!
I hope you'll all join me in congratulating Eric. I know he's gonna be a great father. My extended family continues to grow! October 08 Back from AtlantaI made it back from Atlanta. It rained almost constantly the last two days. The plane was late getting out of Savannah, so we were over an hour late getting back to Louisville. THEN there was a medical emergency as we landed, and we had to wait until the para-medics were done before we could deplane. Thank goodness Porsche was patient! The dogs were happy to see me back. It was an adventure just getting from the car to the house. Looks like Brian did a good job taking care of them while I was gone.
The trip was VERY successful. The bosses should be pleased. People in Atlanta were VERY courteous and actually happy we came down to help. I hope to go back there and help again. Free breakfast in the morning, free drinks in the evening, SciFi channel all week and high-speed internet access--man, was I spoiled!
OK, more later. I'm exhausted. Looks like it's going to be a busy weekend, too. Luckily, I've got Monday off from work. I need the rest. October 05 Busy, busy, busySorry about being so quiet lately. Life recently has been quite busy. Today I'm in the Atlanta, Georgia area--about 400 miles from home. We had about 3 days notice to get ready for the trip. Don and I have been here since Sunday evening. We've got a little project at Ft. Gillem. A lot has happened the last couple months. I wish I could write about all of it. More later. I promise! September 05 Catching UpHappy Labor Day! It's been a minute or two since my last entry. I've unfortunately been "tempered" by some recent events. I haven't had the time or the patience to sit down long enough to keep things up to date. Since seem to have an extra day this weekend, I do have a few minutes to review some of the high points of the last couple weeks. Yesterday I ran into one of the "kids" I haven't aggravated for a while. We had about an hour to waste (laundry day!). Tyler was saying a lot of the same things that Erick had said last year. Some things really bothered me. Looks like I may have another "project" coming up. Last week I got an emergency phone call from one of the kids. He and his wife were stranded out in the country about 8 miles from town. No utilities except for water. They had to walk a mile to beg a neighbor to call me. They hadn't had any food in 3 days. Kerri is 5 months pregnant. Neither of their families can or will help them very much. Resources all around are getting pretty thin. I made an emergency food run that night, and another two days later. This weekend they're here at the house with me. Terry has worked around the house a couple months ago for some help I'd given them earlier. This long weekend, though, I just wanted to be sure they are comfortable, well fed and entertained. Work is going OK. As long as I can stay busy and stay away from the headquarters building, I'll be fine. The stress-level at HQ is MUCH higher. We're down to 4 team members now. Charie had an opportunity to move to Delaware and start a new life. She's a great tech and a good friend. I wish the best for her and and her son. She will be missed. David, Charie and I had been kind of "camped out" in some vacant workstations in G2 the last couple weeks. People in that dept are great. They're already talking about "adopting" us and giving us work to do! Terry's brother threw a birthday party to his 5 yr old son last Saturday. Little Danny is autistic. He's a great little kid. A lot of family and friends showed up. I got to see a lot of their family I hadn't seen for a while. Jerry, one of Terry's cousins, came in later. We asked about his brother only to find out that he's been rushed to the hospital the day before. Jake had complications from an appendectomy a few days before. We had some time yesterday to spend some time with him in the hospital. I could write a whole dissertation about our discussions. Suffice it to say that this experience has changed Jake's attitudes about life. I was thrilled to hear him talk lie that. I hope he can be a positive example to his family for a long time to come. With Jake in the hospital, his brother had his sons in tow for the party. Jerry was great with the boys. That's a good thing. Jerry will be a new father within a couple months. Both Jake and Jerry are going to be great fathers. Jerry is one of those kids that takes everything in stride--even intense aggravation from me! I'll start in on him and he'll cut me that little half-grin that just tears me up. Did I mention that I had all these kids as students while they were in school? If Terry calls me "Dad" one more time I'll just adopt the whole family!
Well, the laptop is about "full". I've got to scramble this week to get a new desktop together before my mailbox starts bouncing! Today, though, I've got to get the kids out of bed and see if we can find some work for Terry.
I hope everyone had a great day. August 20 Best Layed Plans ....... Once we got up to speed, plan was for each team member to re-image and reconfigure 3-4 computers per day. In a perfect world, that might work. I've never run into that legendary perfect world yet. Instead of writing some long dissertation this time, however, the following are exerpts from a couple emails I sent my team leader.From Me: This is another one of the older machines. CPU fan stuck--nearly solid! Backup completed, barely, but did check OK. Now the PC locks up when booting from the CD and trying to pull over the new image from the USB drive. Hmmm. What to do? What to do? What would your solution be??
OK, if I get time tonight, I'll pull the pics out of the camera and show you my solution. No, it's not a pic of me hanging by a rope out a 3rd-floor window. It's ugly, but working so far. (Hanging out the window would be ugly, too, I guess. That's not the solution I'm using though--not yet.)
Response from team lead: That pic of you hanging out the window would not be funny in real life, but one hellofa trick-of-the-camera if you were creative enough!!! <Stan, I can stall him for a while but we need security there right away.
Note: Stan is base security! lol
THE SOLUTION!
1. "Borrow" a fan from down the hall. Position it so the airflow blows directly on the CPU and crank up the air conditioner.
2. Replace the hard drive (did I mention the hard drive failed, too?).
3. "Borrow" a DVD drive from the newest not-currently-being-used computer I can find.
4. Use what ever materials it takes to get the DVD drive in cable-range.
5. Boot and load the image from the DVD
6. Pray.
Hey, I know it's ugly, but it's working. Better than hanging out the window!
August 16 Too much time on my hands!The past weekend was a bit unusual. Unusual in the fact that I really didn't do anything special. That can be a bad thing. I have too much time to cause trouble. lol I really needed the time to catch up on some small projects. Erick has been after me to work on his laptop. I pretty much finished it on Saturday.
I stopped by to tell Erick about he progress on his laptop Sunday evening. Through his typical subdued display of enthusiasm I could see the real excitement in his eyes. Then I dropped the bomb on him. (I told you I can be a trouble maker!) Erick has had a kindatough time with girlfriends over he last couple years, and it seems to have affected his self-esteem a bit. Honestly, there aren't that many young ladies in our area that are worthy of my my little bro'. OK, I'm biased. I know. As much as I try to encourage him, it's just not the same as if the ladies gave him the attention he deserves.
What I told him was that I had put his pic on hotornot.com. I thought the kid was gonna pound me! He kept saying, "What have you done!?" I'm gonna rotate some pics of his on the page. So, help me build the kid up a bit! http://www.hotornot.com/r/?eid=ELGMOMB&key=VFX
More later. Gotta get ready for work! August 08 Day at the Lake Well, it had to happen. I just had to break down and take a day off! A bunch of the kids and I took off out to the deep country and did nothing but lounge around and in the lake. Mike tried to teach his dog to swim. Brutus didn't care for it much. The kids swam most of the afternoon. I did the cooking (and got "cooked" by the sun). I swim like a rock. The kids had a canoe. They spent more time capsizing the canoe and using it as a toy instead of canoeing! Too much time in the sun, I guess. The boys found one of the boat docks to be too wobbly and summarily destroyed it. I wish I'd had the camera with me then. I did get a few photos earlier and posted them in a new album. The National Street Rod Association car show was in Louisville on Saturday. We went over and stayed for a bit (till the girls got hungry and started whining!). A new photo album will be coming soon from there also. August 05 New Car I've had the new car about a month now, I guess. Nice car--'95 LaSabre. It's a lot more economical to drive than the old Olds or the truck. About two weeks afer I got it some malcontent singled it out in a shopping center parking lot. It's kinda hard to see the dent in the photo, but the scratches are perfectly evident.August 01 Night at the Movies 10 Weekend Double FeatureJust as Erick and I emerged from viewing our much-anticipated feature for the weekend we ran into our friend Mike and about six other friends. Well, it didn't take long to make the decision to see a 2nd feature. We spent more time arguing about who'd get to pay for the next one. Erick won. It does little good to try to argue with the kid. I'd treated him to the 1st film for his birthday. He'd reminded me that mine was only last week. Anyway, Mike and his crew couldn't get in to see what they wanted, so we drove across town to another theatre.
Stealth
I'll admit I was hooked by the previews to this film. I wasn't disappointed. Blame my techie side. From the 1st scene and the top-down view of the cockpit of one of the aircraft I knew it would be a fun ride. The flight scenes were teriffic. The aircraft are beautiful. Eddy becomes "aware" after a lightnining strike re-wires his circuits. He learns too well too quickly. The commander has his own agenda and emperils the team. He's their "best friend" before things get exposed. This is a good story, but its almost overwhelmed by the visuals. It's a keeper--a solid 4 stars!
The Devil's Rejects
I regularly watched films of this genre a quarter century ago. The production made it look like it was about that old, too. It was quite reminiscient. There are no good-guys in this film--except maybe for the innocent victims. The main characters have NO redeeming qualities at all. Even the vigilante sheriff goes bad. The film is vulgar, bloody and violent all the way through. If you liked he Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you'll like this one. Don't take the kids. Rob Zombie gives us nothing new here. The soundtrack is good, though. Two stars is very generous for this film.
July 31 Tales of Todd the Great, pt 1Todd was another one of the kids that suffered through my aggravation while in school. He's been a talented poet and artist ever since middle school. I continue to hope he'll be able to do something productive with those talents. Todd has also had a tendency to disappear from time to time.
A couple weeks ago I had gone to a store to pick up a video card I found there on clearance. I hadn't seen Todd for better than a year. I walked up to the check out to find none other than Todd there working the lane. We talked about computers for a bit. He had mentioned he's upgraded EverQuest and his video card hard a difficult time handling it. I almost walked back in the store right them and bought the other one for him. Two days later I did just that. Todd's known me for over a decade, so nothing I would do would really surprise him. I really don't think he believed I was serious about the video card though. lol
A couple days later I grabbed Erick and we ran up to Todd's to take him the video card. Of course, I had to install it for him. It made quite a difference in the game. Todd was pleased. I told him it was for all those birthdays I'd missed. He knew better than to argue. lol
I took Erick with me hoping he and Todd would get along well. Erick enjoyed listening to Todd reminisce about when he was in school putting up with me. It was a good evening. Erick is a pretty good judge of character, too. I was curious to hear his impression. His only comment about Todd was, "He has wild eyes". lol
"One of these daysI've got to see a pup out of you," is one of the things I've told Todd fpr years. Happily, that has come to pass. Two months ago his girlfriend, Stacey, gave birth to a handsome young man. I am happy for and very proud of both Todd and Stacey.
I've got more pics of them in the Kids with Kids album. Look at he expresion on Todd's face. That's one proud father! If you think Todd has wild eyes, take a look at those on his son!
July 30 What does a tech do after work??I am a computer tech in a team of eight. Almost invariably when you get that many techs together there will a percentage of them be serious gamers. My team follows that pattern. Steve's current game of choice is EverQuest. One day a couple weeks ago he told me he was going to build a character after my appearance and personality. What he came up with is the dwarf-palladin warrior pictured below. (I direct you from there to the photo in my profile.) Pretty accurate, I guess. Steve's comment was, "I played all night just to buy the armor for him!". Thanks, Steve! lol
July 24 Night at the Movies 9 The Island Take the best parts of the story lines of Cocoon and Logan's Run (both of which I liked), then smash, shoot or blow up everything in sight and you've pretty much nailed down The Island. No, really that's too simple. The Island is an excellent scifi/action film. It takes a minute or two to set up the story, then for the rest of the movie you're hanging on to your seat. The sets and scenes (whether computer generated or not) were well done. They satisfied my techy side without being over-indulgent. Man, oh man, I'd take the sky bike or that Cadillac ANY day!
This film should raise some questions again about the morality of cloning. It also could raise questions about what could or should be done to extend health and/or life. Can spare organs or limbs be grown for "insurance"? If not, I hope we never get to the point where we grow "complete replacements" treated only as property or products. Mankind could never do that, could we??
This one gets a solid 4 stars on my chart. It's a keeper!
Incidently, during the course of the evening the hood of my new car got keyed and dented. It was keyed all the way to the metal for about a foot and a half! I'd like to take the perpetrator, clone him (producing a decent human being) and let the original spend the rest of his life in a pain amplifier. Yes, I've got a good idea who did it. I hope the security video shows him doing it. Erick and I had stopped to pick up a new video card as a birthday gift for a long-time friend I recently rediscovered. More about Todd later. Tanks a Lot, pt 2 A couple weekends ago, Erick and I took a day and drove down to Ft. Knox, KY. Ft. Knox is currently the US Army's Armor training school as well as headquarters for the Army's recruiting command (USAREC). Oh, yeah, I work there, too. After a quick drive through by some of the areas in which I work, we took a tour of the Patton Museum. I like armor. Erick was very patient as I shot photos from almost every angle of the outside static displays. I'm going back to get some inside shots! BTW, all the equipment owned by the Patton museum is operable!Anyway, I finally got another scanner interfaced to the laptop and have posted a few of the pics in a new album. I'll post more as time and space permits.
July 23 Night at the Movies 8 Fantastic 4 Here's the latest offering in the comic book / cartoon heroes come to the big screen films. This just had to be a film loaded with special effects. Johnny Storm is a bit over-played. I liked Ben Grimm's character. One thing I was particularly interested to see was whether the characters would be portrayed "true to form" as I knew them in my youth. I'm happy to say, yes, they are. I especially enjoyed the bridge scene and the ending where they all work together to defeat Dr. Doom. Will there be a sequel? Is Dr. Doom really done? This one will make it to my library. I'll give it 3 and half stars. Night at the Movies 7 Dark Water"Spooky" is probably the best single-word description for this film. The filmmakers did an excellent job both maintaining the mood of the film as well as keeping us guessing what would happen next. Dark Water is well acted and the characters are believable. Was there really another little girl? Is she possessed or just acting out? Will Mom become a pill-poppin' junky? How much stress can one person take? Oh, look here comes a dark flashback! Turn off the water and get a job!
Isn't good art supposed to evoke an emotional response? This one does. Erick didn't care for it much. I knew the film got to him a bit. I liked it. Dark Water will mess with your head a bit. I'll give it 3-stars. |
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