Happy Baby

Ruary checkin' things out

I was pretty impressed when he decided to turn his head around (not Exorcist style mind you). I am surprised at how strong babies are for their size.

I started a Flickr page for the little guy here: Shimmy Family

The baby is dropping...

But not like this:


Today is the due date given to us by the hospital. Who knows, maybe tonight? We walked around quite a bit today and Kel got a bunch of tummy rubs from nice people. I just want him out so I can justify my bad nights of sleep and not wake up all night long to every noise thinking it's time to go to the hospital...

The votes are in...

First off, it's official, we will have a new president for the next four years! Great, the democratic process succeeds again.

2nd, I was thinking wouldn't it be weird and awesome if we had Border Collie puppies and a baby at the same time?

Lastly, it looks like baby will be arriving next week sometime with a little coaxing from the docs. I can't hardly wait!

Well... that's a deep subject.

So I was driving around today thinking about our soon-to-be newest family member.

Here are some things I was wondering about you Ruary...

What are you going to look like? What will your cry sound like? What kind of music will put you to sleep? Will your dimples show up when you smile? How fast will you grow up? Will the dogs make you laugh when they do stupid stuff? What will be the first thing that you say? What kind of a boy are you going to be? Will I be happy or sad to see you grow up, or both? Are you going to be serious or goofy or both? Will you do well in school? Are you going to be an artist, musician, or maybe a scientist? Or will you work in production or fast food or be a mechanic? Will you respect others, especially your teachers because your mom is one? Are you going to realize the important things in life because I tell you what I think they are or will you have to learn them for yourself? Can you make it through your teenage years without hurting yourself or anyone else? Will I set a good example for you? Can I keep the bad things in life at a distance for you? Will you forgive me for my hypocrisy? Will you forgive me for my faults? Will you always know that I love you and only want the best for you? Will you understand why you are in trouble by us? Will you love life? Do you want to go to college? Where will you decide to live when you're grown up? What kind of man will you be? Will you find love and happiness? Will you succeed? What do you want to be when you grow up? Will you have children? What will you name them? Will they come visit their grandparents? Will you be a good dad? Did we raise you well? Did we do enough for you? Were we good parents...?

Oh hell yeah!

The top bunk must be the way to go

I could survive for 1 minute, 16 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

Post-Apocalypse

Ima UBER!!

If I wasn't so lazy I would post a picture of my setup here but I'll just tell you about it.

I am running dual monitors, one 32" Toshiba 1080p as my primary and a 20" Dell as my secondary. Right now I am watching a movie on the Dell from our Dish network satellite box while playing a Youtube video on skateboarding in the Picture-in-Picture on my Dell. On my Toshiba I am editing some Python code and doing this Blog in Firefox as well as learning about the nifty web development features of Google's new "Chrome" browser.

I have the audio from my satellite going through an Altec Lansing 2.1 system and I have the audio from my Ventrilo session going through a Sony 5.1 DTS system.

So much stimulation! AWESOME!!!

Time For A New Post

The Typo Eradication Advancement League (TEAL)

I read this amusing article (see below) and felt compelled to link to their website. I found that you can still buy T-shirts but the rest of the site defaults to this error message:

Typo Eradication Advancement League

Statement on the signage of our National Parks and public lands to come
~~~
Note the lack of period completing the sentence, sarcasm high-5. Anyhow, these guys have been slapped with a fine for their well-intended vandalism so I assume if they sell some shirts that will help cover their dues.

I don't want to see all misspellings and grammar no-nos corrected because our language has evolved and there is cultural relevance to some of these mistakes. However, if the signage is in the public eye and used to inform and educate I feel it should be accurate. We don't want to live in a world of stupid do we?

Article as posted on MSNBC --- TEAL

Meth-O-Lantern

The other day whilst I was driving through a part of town that seems to be kind of thick with meth users I had a rare stroke of genius.

I was thinking about the people that have been on meth long enough to start losing teeth due in part to poor hygiene, malnutrition, and direct contact with corrosive toxins.

With Halloween - my favorite holiday - coming up, I drew a connection between our beloved carved pumpkins and our despised pumpkin-headed tweakers. Hence "Meth-O-Lantern" was born.

I figured I better get it posted on the web because I've used the term a few times with a few different people and it seems to be a hit. You heard it here first ladies and germs.

Have a great day!

Getting ready for the babysaurus

It's a boy! Ruary Dale is going to be the newest member of our family coming early November. Kel has been doing an awesome job getting the babyroom ready. I have been very busy mentally preparing myself for the next 18 or so years.

Seriously though my big task this summer is making sure the shop gets built so we can get our extra stuff out of the house and get our things out of storage. The shop is coming along nicely and I expect them to be done with it a few weeks into August.

Where the F#$K is summer?!

It's been raining a lot, aaaaaaaaa lot. I donned my rain gear the other day and went golfing in a veritable monsoon. I shot bad and my hands were cold. I don't know if I'll ever get used to that but I still love the sport.

We've had some tough times around here lately but things are looking up. Kel is feeling better and we've got the spot cleared for the shop to go up. This is going to be a good summer.

Peace out --->

Golfing weather?!

Yes indeed, it's that time of the year when all my winter hobbies start to get in the way of my favorite summer hobby, golf. I wish I didn't suck so bad. Every time I hit a great shot I think to myself, "Maybe I could make a living doing this." Then inevitably I hit my next shot and predictably my dreams melt into a smoldering pile of shit.

So here's a bit of the list:

Baby upcoming
Bowling ending
Men's golf club started
Men's golf team upcoming
Planning cruise
OBEF auction retreat upcoming
Building the shop
Lots of firewood to cut
and so much more...

I friggin hate clowns-

Playing hookey! No not hockey.

I'm really looking forward to Age of Conan (a game) that is coming out on May 20th. Check these screenshots from their site:





I'm taking a day off work because I can. I figured since I never call in sick (going on a year and a half) the least I can do is schedule some time off here and there. I am doing some chores around the house and this afternoon I will be working at the non-profit group I am a part of. We are getting ready for this year's auction that raises money for the school district. I'll write more about the group later.

Have a great weekend!

2008

Happy New Year from us to all our friends and family.

It lives!!

Ewwwww. 9 days after the doctors did their deed I am limping around with less pain in my knee than I had before the surgery. Good times.

Christmas rocked. I had a blast in Lincoln City with the wife and fam shopping at the outlets and gambilino at the casino. It was over too quickly but I am glad to be sleeping in mine own bedn again.

Happy new year all!!!

Here we go knee surgerino!!

Thursday at 1:45pm is check-in time for my arthroscopic knee surgery. I have a tear in my medial meniscus and a ganglion syst in my knee! I'm excited because I've never had surgery before. They are going to put me in twilight sleep and go in and shave off the torn cartilage. It should be over pretty quickly and I should get some pain management tools. After a couple of days I will really have to start working the knee out. I'm hoping that I will be a super-human/robot/bionic/cyborgenic/beast-monster/hero when it's all over. I want to free-run (gets cool at about 2 minutes in) and jump and fly and use my knees to lift extremely heavy objects with. I will talk to you all when I can write again, wish me luck!

Apocalyptico

HOLY SHIT!!!

I am duly impressed. I knew this part of the state was prone to moody and severe weather from time to time. I have seen torrential downpour followed by golden delicious sunshine. I sweated out some nearly 100 degree days and we have had several inches of snowfall on our front lawn since we've lived here. But WOW, this last wind storm was fantastic.

I was out on-call Sunday morning when the wind started picking up. With a wary eye to the towering trees I ventured out of my work van to a customer's front porch. I spent about 10 minutes inside troubleshooting and isolated the trouble. When I headed back outside the wind was blowing so hard I had to hold my hat on my head and it was a challenge to open the door on my van. That was the little storm...

Sunday night the shnickety hit the fizzan. We had some power outages during the day and we had generators running the remote sites to keep people's phones working. I was supposed to go out and fuel up generators Sunday night but I was really reluctant to do it. My boss and I were going to go together but I think he smelled the fear on me and let me off the hook (forgive the telco humor). He went out and met one of our other guys. I was happy to head home and hang with wifey.

We have been doing storm cleanup for 3 days now. I fixed 911 on Tuesday when it was brought to my attention that it was not working properly. Due to a fiber cut in Qwest's network we lost our long distance capabilites and internet access. We have internet back as of this afternoon but I think Qwest has an SS7 (a channel dedicated to carrying long distance call routing information) problem and our long distance is still not working. I spent a couple of hours today trying to figure out if we could reroute our long distance traffic over our microwave shot to Raymond... it pretty much can't be done. Hopefully tomorrow.

I wasn't even able to return the calls from my doctor's office but they were able to contact me today. It looks like my knee surgery will be within the next couple of weeks. I'll keep you posted.

Thaksn fro reidang my crapppola!!

-R

Turkey Week

My last post was boring so I am hurrying to bury it with something new. Let's see, I had my doctor appt. at 8:30am on Monday. The physician's asst. was cool. He had me walk and squat and bend my knee. He moved my kneecap around and it made popping noises. He actually checked both my knees. Then doctor dickhead comes waltzing in. I don't know if my problem is just so minor that he felt like I shouldn't be bothering him with it or what but he was really aloof and only spent about 3 minutes in the room with me asking a few questions. I guess when you're a specialist you can be an asshole.

Anyways he ordered an MRI for me then he took off. I got to the nurses station and was looking around for him thinking he would give me some instructions about how I should treat my knee. I actually had to send a nurse to ask him for me and she came back to tell me all the doc said was "avoid squatting". So no more crapping in the woods for me for awhile.

Happily they were able to get me in for my MRI Monday night at 8:45pm so I didn't have to drive back into the city. The MRI took about 25 minutes and the only thing I saw all day regarding what was possibly wrong with my knee was the paperwork the doctor's office sent over that send 'Torn Lateral Meniscus'. So I guess we'll find out if that's the case. I prolly won't hear from the doc-tator until after Turkey day.

I did manage to spend a lot of money whilst in the city though. Gotta love REI... and Tonkin Toyota. This is a stock photo and I'll post some of my own soon but here's what my new truck looks like:



Oh yeah, everyone have an excellent holiday!!