This weekend I ended up installing Ubuntu Linux onto an old machine that was choking under Windows XP. Wow. I ended up Remote Desktopping into Windows from Ubuntu to do Windows only things and spent the rest of the weekend in Linux, including finishing up my handout for the Sunday School class that I had to teach yesterday morning. It even connected to my network printer without issues [Yes, I had to configure it a tiny bit, but it wasn’t hard]. If you haven’t tried Ubuntu, there are ‘live CD’ images available. You just download the image, burn it to a disk, and then reboot your computer. Ubuntu looks good, works fast, and makes the old Pentium III 1 Ghz 256 MB or RAM feel like a screamer.
Monthly Archives: April 2006
New Tooth
Evie’s getting her first tooth in. Its the bottom front tooth.
It is Enough to Make Me Cry
This morning Jessica has been cutting onions up in preparation for dinner. She has been doing this upstairs in the kitchen while I am working in the basement about as far away from the onions as I could possibly be. However, the eye irritating sulphur has made its way down and is permeating the office, my eyes and the computers, who are also crying.
Sweet Release
One of the clients I work for in Texas (because I have so many, ha ha) is releasing a major release I’ve been working on today. Wow. This hasn’t been as stressful as about a year ago, but the last week has been a bit tense for me. I’ve not gotten the best sleep the last couple weeks on top of it (or because of it). Hopefully I will be able to get some good rest tonight as well as start working on the next project, which I’m looking forward to.
Prayer Request Update
A few weeks ago I posted that Hal, one of the elders at church had been diagnosed with cancer. Future updates from the doctor (that should have been posted here, but were not) revealed that he had a 60% chance of complete remission. This last week showed tests in one area of Hal’s marrow was completely clear of cancer cells! They’re going to do further chemotherapy as apparently there is a chance that his spine may possibly be dealing with cancer (I’m told that is rather common), but in the short term this is fantastic news. It is a praise at least, but do continue to be prayer for his recovery because the chemotherapy just saps all of the energy out of the patient.
Rattling My Innards
Last night, for Jessica’s final part of her Birthday celebration we went to Rodizio in the LoDo part of Denver with our friends Craig & Krystal. It is a Brazilian grill. I have been to two of these before Rodizio, in Texas and knew that we were in for a treat. If you’ve not been to a restaurant like this before then you need to understand that this is an all you can eat food fest. This particular restaurant had various meats, seafoods and veggies that they served to some tables. Somehow our table only got meats. When you want their meat servers to bring various types of meat to your table you flip over a little wooden object that has red, yellow and green sections painted onto it. You flip this so that the green side is facing up into the air. As Craig said, this is turning on the meat spigot.
Between January and April they have ‘wild game’ feature meats. Yesterdays was Wild Boar and Rattlesnake Sausages. I had several rattlesnake sausage bit (they didn’t give you a whole sausage unless you asked for one, which is fine by me) and I quite enjoyed them. Our waiter was a young, spunky guy whose nametag read “Jeffizzle.” He had a funky liney beard. That’s the only words I can think to describe it shortly because the longer description would be a small 1/8th inch (2 millimeter) wide band that ran from his sideburns down around his chin up to the other side. Its an accent piece like a necklace, only made of hair. Yeah, it looked a wee weird.
Side Story
Craig had somehow escaped all of the noise about Brokeback Mountain in the last 4 months and found himself watch the video while exercising yesterday morning. He got 28 minutes into the film until the two men make lip contact. At which point he had to stop working out, had to go pour bleach into his eyes, and had to go find out more about the movie to see if this was just a funky one-time situation. To his dismay it was not and so he promptly wrapped up the DVD and sent it back to NetFlicks. I tell you that to tell you this. Jeffizzle was not afraid to break out into what he called his Brokeback Mountain routine when we had finally decided to turn off the meat spigot and survey the dessert options. He outlined the various options that were available for us in decadent desserts and when reaching a point in the dessert selection switched to a super accentuated ‘s’ lisp and described the dish in rather sensual terms. We chuckled and he moved on into the next item in his regular speach pattern. Craig was probably mentally having flashbacks of the morning and wanting to run for the Rockies, but restrained himself.
When it came time to pay the bill we did so with a slightly liberal tip, but one that reflected the service and the length of time we had squatted at the table [definition: squatting is sitting at a table for a particularly long time at a restaurant. This can prevent wait staff from serving other customers at that table and possibly decreasing their income from tips for the year]. As we left we hit the restrooms to do what people do there and happened to pass the waiter showing off our receipt exclaiming, “I went brokeback on another table again and look at this!”
We then strolled through part of downtown Denver to walk off some of the protein we’d glutted ourselves on. This is always fun because there are pan handlers, vagrants, other strollers and lots of carriages waiting to draw you. Lights, busses, some cars, cops and shops all looking particularly metropolitan make for a fun walk. As is always the case I ended up talking about programming practicies with Craig who patiently teaches me all about the things he learned by actually going to school for his carear path. He’s also got a lot more life experience in coding than I do so I have to say that I like to be a sponge when he shares things. Fortunately some of the things he shared with me last night were things I knew which tells me that I’m starting to have some competance in the area of coding after 5 years 🙂
We had a good time with the Kaes’, Jessica got to have a fun meal, and in the end we really enjoyed a great downtown Denver experience.