RSS Minnow

Unlike the skipper and his slow shipmate, Gilligan –
RSS has nothing to do with the
ocean.
However, if you don’t know what it means, you could be just as lost.
You’ll need a News Aggregator, which is a program that collects RSS files from across
the internet and without much work turns them into viewable bits of text with links
to full articles.

This is quite nifty, especially if you think about how many sites you might look through in
a day.
Lets say that you check out www.randypeterman.com every day and you think to yourself,
“Golly, Randy doesn’t put up news stuff that often, I wish there was a way I could
be notified when he does put some new news up.”
Well, with RSS and an aggregator (I recommend
FeedDemon)
you could just open up the aggregator and you’d see if I did or not.
You’re smart, so you say, “I can do that now with a browser, why not just do that?”
Well, I’ll tell you what, if you check enough sites in one day this could really save
you time, assuming that they have RSS feeds.

The bottom line is that if you’re a busy individual, you can save a lot of time by simply
adding an RSS aggregator to your computer-lifestyle.
I check FeedDemon every morning with my email, so I know if some of the websites I read
regularly have been updated.
I can also get the news and other fun information, all with this handy-dandy little file
format.
Yes, file format, because RSS is
just a file.

CSS? What Does that Mean?

It means Cascading Style Sheets.
Its a nice way to make the pages look good without loading them down with extra
HTML so that the page
gets super heavy, making dialup connections unbearable, and older browsers
cough and hack on nested tables..

I use stylesheets to make the page have multiple styles.
Find the “Pick a style” links and test it out.

What Are Access Keys?

Do you use Microsoft Access?
Good for you.
Accesskey’s don’t have anything to do with MS Office Access.
But they do have to do with handicap accessibility, or just plain quick shortcut keys.

If you are using Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher on windows you can use accesskeys by
pressing Alt + whatever the accesskey is.
For example, on this site, the news link accesskey is the key number 1 (one).
So, using your super sleuth mind, you probably already put Alt and 1 together and came up
with an algebra equation.
Once you’re done with your algebra, try pressing and holding the Alt key and then
pressing the ‘1’ (one) key.
Nothing happened did it? In Internet Explorer you have to then press the enter key because
the accesskey only moves the cursor’s focus to the link associated with the accesskey.
However, if you want to use Mozilla you’ll find the accesskeys trigger the links as well.

If you’re on the Macintosh I’m told you should use the Ctrl (Control) key.
I don’t have one, so I’ll just take the word of the professionals who passed on that tidbit
of information.

A special message from Abigail:

mk lkni iuurtetrtt j h

Abigail (Abby) is one cute toddler, she’s a real treat, except for when
she’s grumpy, or wakes up at some odd hour of the night. Her mom and dad
love her so much. To her credit her birth more than tripled the number
of hits this site gets a month.

Abby is walking all over the place and running too.
She is able to say Cat, Shoes, Daddy, Mommy and Apple Juice.
She also can make the sound of a sheep (ba) and a lion (raaaaaaaahhhhhh).
What a gal, we love her a lot!

Born March 30th, 1978, Jessica Marie Peer was a military brat and so she
moved all over the US, even to Hawaii (where she had a lucrative side-job
tracking sand everywhere). Bored with the life as a young child she
turned 15 or 16 at the age of 5. A more mature gal than her peers (no
name puns please) she fell in love with Jon Bon Jovi. That relationship
didn’t last since legally, she was jail bate.

Throughout school Jessica was a straight A student, she made her life
complete by being an over achiever. In High School she took all of the
classes that the Carson High School offered in the Math department by the
end of her Junior year. Because Carson High was so stinky she Home
schooled her senior year. This was beneficial for her as it gave her an
opportunity to work full time at a day care, and finish her classes ahead
of the other seniors that she new. Being a senior also got her great
discounts at Denny’s and other fine dining establishments (get it? Senior
discount? Sorry.[RP])

In her Sophomore year she met Randy Peterman at a youth group meeting for
the Grace Evangelical Free Church. They immediately thought poorly of one
another and didn’t see one another again until their Junior year, which
gave them both some time get ‘cooler’. Randy was dating a Senior at the
time (Cindy Falconer), which didn’t bother Jessica who was eager to get
together with the bass player in the band Randy was in (Jeremy Telling).
Jessica and her best friend Glory ‘Bucky’ Bucknell both liked Jeremy and
considered the rest of the band members necessary evil.

To make a long story short Jessica and Randy got married, they moved to
Texas where they went to school at Tyndale Theological Seminary. They
later had a baby and they’re living happily ever after (Theoretically, I
mean no one is happy all the time, come on).

Randy Peterman is writing this, he is writing about himself in third person.
That’s ridiculous – why do I need to write about myself in the third person?
OK, well, I’m going to tell you about myself.
Please don’t hesitate to write me to ask other pertinent questions about me.
Limit those questions to things that are NOT perverse or socially questionable.

That being said…

I was born to two parents, a male and female.
They go by Vern and Nancy Peterman and they also have two other progeny, Eddie and Rebecca.
Because Eddie and Rebecca are like me they don’t go by their full names, they go by Ed and Becky respectively.
Sometimes Ed goes by ‘Dude’ and sometimes Becky goes by ‘My’.
Sometimes Ed goes by in a VW, sometimes My goes by in a Honda.
Time goes by rather quickly unless you’re in the Doctor’s waiting room.

[Switching to free flow poetry]

Ed, 
  My 
	and I 
  grew up mostly in California and Nevada.
    We had
     times on the road that took us
  to other
    states.
We have grandparents
  they have many   many   kids that are 
	 grand
	

[Switching to Dr. Suess mode]

	Ed, My and I
	Bye, we said good-bye
	To our mom and pop
	Out of the nest we'd hop
	

	Randy Married Jessica
	Got married in October-a
	Squiggle, wiggle, piggle, slid
	Moved to Texas Yes we did
	

[Switching to Yoda mode]

		Married Shari did Eddie, Yes.
		Have a son Brennan they do.
		Live in Carson City, yes, they must.
	

[Switching to Haiku Mode]

Becky to Denver
Lives with My Parents There Now
Making a new home
	

I’m blessed to have a beautiful, godly wife, a precious, cute daughter, and an amazing extended family (some of which have the ‘shock and awe’ effect :D).

This is the best burger I’ve ever had turn out consistently
fabulous. Having eaten a whole lotta burgers in my life and living in
Texas, where barbecuing is big, I’ve gotta say, this is one powerful
piece of meat.

Ingredients

Burgers

• 1 tsp chipotle chili powder
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt (substitute with sea salt, or I guess you could use
  table salt, it will change the taste)
• 1 pound ground round (hamburger – I like the 15% fat, Jess thinks its
  too fatty)
• 1 can Cooking Spray (No, you’re not going to use the whole
  thing)
• (optional) 4 Kaiser rolls (Don’t use regular buns, this is a ‘fancy’
  burger, why spoil it with the taste of Burger K**g)
• 1^3/4 cups Tequila-spiked Salsa

Tequila-Spiked Salsa

• 2 cups chopped seeded tomato (or tomatoe if you’re Dan Quayle 🙂 )
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 1/3 cup chopped peeled avocado (do you ever eat avocado skin?)
• 2 tbsp fresh lime juice (substitute old rotten juice if necessary)
• 2 tsps Tequila (actually I’ve never had this with tequila, if you leave
  it out, the burgers will still rock)
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 2 garlic cloves minced (but don’t mince your fingers, this isn’t minced
  meat burgers)

Preparation & Cooking

Burgers

1. Prepare grill
2. Combine chili powder, salt, and beef. Divide the mixture into four
   equal portions, chaping each portion into a 1/2″ thick patty.
3. Place patties onto the grill rack coated with cooking spray – then keep
   an eye on them flipping them when needed.
4. Grill/toast rolls if you have them, but don’t burn them please
5. Once all the burgers and rolls are ‘perfect’ add the Tequila-Spiked
   salsa to the tops of the burgers (after they’re on the rolls) and eat
   them while they’re hot.
6. Join Guadalaja Burgers Annonymous, cause these bad-boys are addictive.

Salsa

Um, mix all the ingredients together in no particular order.

NOTE:

If you’re feeling prepared try making the salsa one day in advance, this
will let the flavors of the salsa mix and make for a VERY tasty treat
when you eat the burgers. But don’t let the salsa sit for too long in the
fridge (4-5 days is too long, usually) because the avocado is pretty sensitive to time.

One Year Old Pictures from August of 2003.
Photo’s by Michael Mason, Photographer.

Tongue and Cheek.

Abby takes a walk with Mom and ‘Aunt’ Louanne Mason.

Cute laugh on a cute girl.


Yet Another Cute laugh on a cute girl.

I love being her dad!

Woo Hoo!

One of my personal favorites.

I’m listening to Hokus Pick Manouver’s first major album, “Pick It Up.”
It’s Friday afternoon and I was planning on wrapping up my work on Sojourner
Ministries site but have come to a question that needs answering, so I
figure I’ll put a few moments into an update for the news section.
I’ve been busy so I’ve got lots to share.

Friday of Last

Happy Birthday Louanne Mason, who turned older.
Jessica and I went to the Mason’s for dinner and enjoyed an evening of food and
fellowship.
Props to Louanne who made me wheat and corn free food 🙂
Abby whacked her head on their table causing a little swelling and a bit of a
mouth bleed, it was her first accident of that severity, but we knew it was
coming.
After a few moments of snuggling with mom she was back in her usual playful mood.

Saturday – A Smashing Time in Sherman

Jessica’s cousin and her husband bought a house in Sherman, Texas, that they have
been slowly but surely restoring.
Unfortunately the previous owners took shortcuts shorter than most contractors would
do so sometimes they’ve found odd things.
Continuing in the tradition of me helping Doug do demolition I helped try to do some
plumbing.

Doug and I spent most of the day trying to get the plumbing to work but ended up
getting some other stuff removed including their stove range oven as well as the
cabinetry around them.
Eventually it was time for Jessica and I to head to Garland where we went to a dinner
put on by Sojourner Ministries.
It was a refreshing time and we felt encouraged that Steve is as passionate as ever to
share “The Jewish Heart of Christianity.”
Amanda and Doug were kind enough to watch Abigail while we made out excursion.
We came back to Sherman and stayed up far too late with Doug and Amanda.

SUNDAY!

Sunday morning started bright and early as the children continued their winning streak.
Kids always win in the morning because no matter now much you want to pretend they’re
not screaming, yelling or doing something else noisy – you must get up in case
other adults are sleeping and try to quiet the kiddos.
Soon we were up and ready to finish a little bit more of the kitchen work as well as
some electrical work.
Somewhere in the swing of things we managed to install the new stove and oven and make
it out the door in time to watch the last half of the Indy Racing League race at
Texas Motor Speedway.

The drive to the race track was good because Doug and I got some time to talk.
Doug is a neat guy and I’m glad that he and I have not only become relatives but friends.
We talked about… hey, we talked about private stuff, you don’t get to find out what we
talked about.
We got to the race track and parked out about a quarter of a mile from the bleachers and
walked in and sat down at lap 100.
The cars are loud.
I said the cars are loud.
I can’t hear what you’re saying.

It was amazing to me how fast the cars went, on Television you don’t always get the best
perspective of what is going on.
The vehicles are louder and faster than Television lets on.
And you can forget about communication.
The people in the bleachers were yelling at one another while drinking – fortunately it
wasn’t fights but just ‘normal’ behavior 🙂
I suppose that with cars that loud there’s not much else to be expected.

The race ended prematurely when at lap 185 (it may have been 184 or some other lap, but
that’s my story) one of the cars (#15) crashed into another and caused it to crash into
one of the barriers at approximately 200 MPH.
The car that impacted the wall was almost completely obliterated except for the fusilage
which contained the driver.
The driver was eventually removed from the safety mechanisms in the ‘car’ and apparently
is recovering.

After the race Doug and I waited at the car for a while before we headed home and talked more
about stuff you’ll only have to imagine.
We grabbed dinner before going home and ate our Taco Bell whilst being swarmed by our ‘chillens’.
We then hung up two cabinets and then it was time to head home to Euless.

Jessica and Abigail slept in the car and I listened to the radio.
The problem is that what came on the radio was a talk show called “The White Horse Inn.”
It tried to be a reformed discussion group but instead ends up being goofy and frustrating for me.
Since I’m not reformed it just tweaks with me and makes me want to argue.
Unfortunately the hosts never listen to my arguments.

The Rest of the Week

This week was a pretty good one at work because the bosses were
impressed with my work on the latest beta of WorldClient.
I love working at Alt-N Technologies, I don’t think that there are
that many companies out there where things are as crazy as they
are here and yet we still get so much done.

Abby’s been a bit of a struggle because she’s been getting more and more
character and personality.
She wants what she wants when she wants it.
NOW!
However, she’s lots of fun and I think that being a dad is going to
continue to require more of me, but its been really great.

Resting in Him,

Randy “Sofa Logic” Peterman

As is typical for us we were not home this weekend.
We visited our friends the Nuzzi’s in Austin once again (though never enough).
We were celebrating Tony and Josh’s birthdays and they celebrated mine (kindly).

The weekend was over all a fun time except that my allergies
decided to give it a hard push to see if they could drive
me to insanity.
Ha ha!
They didn’t succeed, I’m only partially crazy now.
Claritin helps some, but due to the absolutely astronomical amount
of pollen in the air I was still pretty sneezy.
That being said – we persisted in having fun and made a day out of
things – twice.

Friday

Friday evening we rolled into their place around 6:00 after being
on the road for approximately three hours.
And we went to dinner shortly after exchanging presents (I have to
confess, that yes, once again, I gave Tony a CD – I have to
give him music, its a disorder).
We went to Logan’s Steakhouse.
Logan wasn’t able to serve us, but some other fellow did.
To cause confusion I’ll add that Tony picked out some crazy toys
for me for my birthday which included a nifty mini remote
control car, a rocket and some astronaut food – those things
were given me before dinner.
See how confused you are about things now that I’ve gone back and
forth in the order?

Friday night we stayed up late, as is our tradition.
Tony and I went to Denny’s where we drank liquids until about
Midnight and then we came home and the four adults chatted
and had fun.

Saturday

Saturday we had fun and went to Chipotle’s for lunch and then
went to Smoothie-King for dessert.
Note to self: Jessica doesn’t like pork from Chipotle because it
is too salty.
We then proceeded to the park where we played around for a bit
with the water rockets (remember them as presents from Friday).
Eventually, given enough time we broke everything and moved on.

We rode a small train at the park, which was somewhat fun, but
only because Abby saw animals.
As an adult I think trains at parks should be moving at approximately 50 MPH or more.
That way we can get to the destination faster.

We had dinner at Fuddrucker’s and that was fun because shortly
after that fun the kids went to bed and Tony and I played
Empire Earth for some time.
Which was fun except we didn’t get to win, which was not fun.
We had to quit because the gals got home and we were pooped.
Plus, Erin turned on Saturday Night Live, which was a good
distraction because laughter is one of our favorite past
times.

Church-day

Sunday morning we went to church earlier than we have in a long
time, but managed to get there early enough to drop off the
kids and make Sunday School Class.
Which was good because class involved discussion and we needed
to participate.
We looked at I Theselonians where Paul was talking about being
like a mother.
I would have preferred that we actually take the passage in
context, but the focus was on mothers.
Odd, but at least there was actually something there about
mothers and they weren’t pulling the whole thing out of thin
air.

The main service was sort of about Yom Kippur from Leviticus 16.
We didn’t need our Bible’s because the pastor bluntly told us
that he was going to be going too fast to keep up.
He was right.
I was a hair sad though that the text was not a major emphasis.
They do the music after the lesson (which is my preference) and
so we finished off the service with some prayer and then
headed to pick up our pumpkins.

Lunch was “Fresh Choice” which fed us lots of food for a reasonable price.
Then we went home to the Nuzzi’s and prepared to go home to Euless.
We made it home just in time to unload the car and relax.
The drive home was nice I got lots of talking time with Jessica.

Resting in Him,

Randy Peterman