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.
Category Archives: News
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.
Evie Rolled Over Today at 3:02
Just thought I’d post that Evie rolled over on her own today for the first time. It’s pretty cool, except that it means soon she’ll be crawling, then walking then asking for keys to the car 😉
A New Car Seat for Abby
Two days ago Abby’s car seat started giving us serious grief and she rode him in the car with only a four point harness instead of 5 points. That was less than ideal but I disassembled part of it and tried to fix it. To no avail. So yesterday evening we dropped her off out our neighbors’ place for about an hour and ran over to Target (our favorite French store) and picked up a new one. Dang. Not only are there lots of options, but you can pay a lot of money for a really uncomfortable looking [and feeling] seat. Kudos to Target for having them at eye level so we could touch, smell and taste these expensive safety restraints.
We chose one that has cup holders. But in Abby’s case they’ll probably just hold her miniature stuffed animals most of the time 🙂
Happy Birthday, My Bride!
Jessica turns 28 today. In a week her mom will be 29 and a week after that her sister will be *cough – I feel old* 16.
I could probably write a long description of the wonders that are my daily life with Jessica, but then I wouldn’t be getting work done and a beautiful ode to my beautiful bride would lead to homelessness. So let me just say that I love her dearly and am looking forward to the next 28 years with her 🙂
Good-Bye, Hiram, See You Soon
My Grandfather-in-Law, Hiram Roach, the voice after whom the assistant coach character in the Movie Waterboy was modeled after has gone to be with Jesus. He died last night while everyone was sleeping. In our household we’re not sad. No, its not because were calous, but instead because we rejoice that his suffering is ended and he has gone to be with his savior, Jesus. It is hard to be sad when someone is not suffering any more and they are with God. Sure, he’ll be missed and his wife is probably broken hearted (we’ve been praying for her emotional well being), his children are sad, but in the eternal scheme of things he’s just beat us to the finish line temporarily 🙂
Update: I’m a remiss for not clarifying that Hiram died of cancer, but he’s been fighting various forms for about 5 years (to my recollection) so its good that its over.
El Trio Grande
This morning I was quite anxious when I woke up (yeah, I know, “…be anxious for nothing…”). I had to check my email to see if we had more bugs reported in my code. There were a few minor ones, which was relieving, because I don’t do well with big ones. But great tension was from having to sing with two gals from church in a trio. That would be me playing guitar and singing in harmony with two women with great voices. Plus, I had the high part! We dropped the key four whole steps so that I could handle the part, but it was still a stretch for me.
All feedback was that it sounded great. I’m sorry to say that it wasn’t recorded, but it went really, really well. My dad said this evening that we could sing that song every week for a year and he’d be OK (not because he likes repetition, but that it was an indication that he enjoyed it). We sang the song, “In Christ Alone,” which I’ve not heard with the arrangement that we did. I’m hoping that the two gals involved will agree to record it here. I’ll have to figure out any licensing issues because I don’t want to charge for Pordcast readers/listeners to hear the song (that would be stinkerific), but I’m also not going to pay $300.00 out of pocket to host an MP3 🙂 I’ll keep you posted.
Meeting of the Minds: IETF
Last night I got to meet some of the gentlement who are working on DKIM, an anti-phishing technology (in laymans terms, its more than that to the geeks, whom I’ll let explore via Google or some other search engine). I got to meet (in alphabetical order by last name) Eric Allman, Dave Crocker, Dennis Dayman, Jim Fenton, and others whose names frankly have escaped me at present due to absolute exhaustion. However, it was quite an honor. They were all need guys but I was warned to leave my politics at the door by my client who kindly suggested that self injury was far kinder to my body than bringing up politics in this group 😀
We had some Texas barbecue and had some fun. I ended up spending more time with my client’s kids because I wanted to know how they were doing. I used to work as an employee for the client and have known the kids for about 5 years, which is a smaller and smaller fraction of my life, but a pretty large fraction of his kids’ lives.
I’m tired now because I got 5 hours of sleep, 6 hours the night before and 4 the night before that. I’m ready for some rest, next month is looking good for that.
Klingon War Ships
I don’t know why I typed that title in, it just seemed like the wrong thing to do. However, it is there, and I can’t help but to leave it. The snow is falling here and it is predicted that we may have lots of snow here before too long, which will be a real problem because I need to fly out early in the morning to arrive in Grapevine, Texas. Strangely enough if you swap the V and P in Grapevine you get grave pine. I don’t know why that matters, but in the theme of random tidbits, I guess I’ll just have to move on past that goofy observation. Maybe I can call in some Klingon war ships to clear out the snow or simply transport me from CO to TX. Of course knowing the Klingons I’d probably die in the process due to them just enjoying the general idea of inflicting pain.
[If I knew some whitty Klingon phrase, I’d put it here.]