Today we drove to Round Rock.
Slowly.
It took us approximately 5 hours to get here.
I will grant that eventually we stopped for dinner which added some time, but
we just kept getting delayed by traffic and more traffic.
Dinner was a unique experience.

We stopped at the Cracker Barrel in Waco and were seated quickly, our waitress was really nice and took our order almost immediately.
Here’s the problem: the water had fish in it.
Not really, but it tasted like it had fish in it.
So I ordered a soda.
The soda contained Waco Water ice in it.
This is like new Fish Flavored Diet Coke, look out lime and lemon!
It was really not so good.
The waitress asked if I wanted a second serving and I couldn’t pallette a second serving of fish soda.

However, we got to the Nuzzi’s and the weird water experience is all gone.
Now it’ll be time for a wacky weekend.

Resting in Him,

Randy “Water Quality Management” Peterman

Tonight Jessica went out to see a movie with her friend Louanne Mason, they saw Miracle.
I think that’s a story about a bunch of Canadians that moved to the U.S. to be in the Olympics.
Ha ha.
Canadians move to the U.S. all the time, they do it to make big money on our comedy circuit.
Witness Martin Short, Jim Carey, Peter Jennings, William Shatner, Mike Myers, and Harlan Williams.
Oh, and the artist formerly known as Tom Green, however, you have to consider him funny to put him in this list.

Anyway, while Jessica was out I took Abby (new pictures) to get gasoline in the Stratus and to buy something at the store.
While on the way I quizzed Abby on words to see if she could repeat them.
She did OK with words like ‘wonderful’ and ‘puppy.’
However, she really butchered our last name.
Peterman ended up something like “P’da.”
Grandma and Grandpa she can say, but her own last name is a real tuffy.
I’ll have to work with her on that.

There are words I know she knows.
Words like cookie.
Abby loves cookies.
She walks around the house saying, “Nemo! Nemo!”
Or, “Cooky, Cooky, cooky!”
Sometimes, just for fun she’ll start saying, “Jess. Jess.”

Overall I think she’ll score well on the SAT’s next week as we’ve signed her
up for one of those prep-classes the day before, they say that kids are
sponges at this age.
Speaking of sponges she likes Bob, the square panted sponge.
Maybe he’ll be on the SAT’s.
If she scores high I think I’ll give her a cookie.

Resting in Him,

Randy “Square Pants” Peterman

Abby and her Craziness

Daddy gets to kiss Abby. Pretty special, huh?



Abby rocks out.



Abby rocking some more.



Abby gets some yogurt in her hair. And pretty much everywhere else.

This evening Abby called me a geek.
Well, not really.
Actually, she was trying to say tweak.
Tweak because in the Little Miss book Little Miss Naughty little miss naughty gets her nose tweaked.
However, when her nose got tweaked in the book Jessica (playfully) tweaked Abby’s nose.

It is so cool to be Abby’s dad.
She’s just so amazing to me.
Jessica’s a great mom, too.
I’m truly blessed.

Bible Study Software

The Bible study software that I bought back when I worked at the Manger in Carson City is way outdated.
Therefore I’m working on some of my own, tonight I made a basic web interface that has a left frame with the Bible broken up into testaments (Old and New), the books (in traditional canonical order) and then each chapter as links.
The links open up in the right hand frame showing the chapter selected.
There’s a lot left to do, but I’m in such need of some study software that a King James version on my machine (so I don’t have to be connected to the Internet)

Resting in Him,

Randy “Bibliotech” Peterman

I had heard that insurance can be a pain in the bottom to deal with.
In fact I had heard that Allstate was particularly rough to deal with.
My experience so far has been painless and Nadine, the gal who’s handling my claim is rather friendly and helpful.
She asked if there was any questions I had, whether I had any issues with the rental car or anything else and was really nice to work with.
I hope I never have to deal with insurance again, but in case I do I hope I get someone as nice as her.

The Honda looks great on the driver’s side read quarter panel because the body shop did a good job.
However, the other side of the car has some dings from doors hitting it.
So now I’ve got an imbalanced Honda 🙂
I’m pleased with this experience – it makes me glad to know that I don’t have to worry about my claim.

Resting in Him,

Randy “Happy as a Clam” Peterman

Got the Honda back this morning.
Everything’s in ship shape.
Which is a good thing, normally you’d not want your car to be shaped like a sea fairing vessel.
However, I don’t want my car to look like a blood vessel either.
Apologies for the non-sequiturs.

Killed some more bugs for work at home last night.
The uninterrupted work time is fabulous for efficiency.

OK, I’m at work so I better get on it.

Resting in Him,

Randy Peterman

Last night as I was going to bed I heard the sound of dishes getting taken care of.
It was 12:20 at least and I was pooped.
However, Doug was up still and was taking care of things so that in the morning everyone else could go on about business as if the dishwasher magically washed the dishes all by itself.
As if the clean dishes got put away all by themselves.
As if the water filter (you must filter the water in North Texas) got filled up all by itself.
Doug was a tired guy serving his family and guests.

I’ve often thought about what makes Doug such a good dad, husband host and friend, I don’t think it’s the water!

Thanks Doug!

Randy “General Contractor” Peterman

Today we helped Doug and Amanda install the first piece of Formica in their kitchen.
After all of the work we’ve done over the last three months it feels good to be nearing the end.
I’m stoked that Doug and Amanda are getting things together.

Abby on the other hand is being a handful.
She’s been splashing in the water bucket several time (Amanda has two aquariums and various bits of water around – Abby has a water locator built in) including tonight while in her sponge, I mean pajamas.
She’s in Nolan’s room crying loudly – rejecting sleep.
While she was out here with us she kept rubbing her eyes, but I think she’s holding on for all she’s worth.

Resting in Him,

Randy Peterman

Well, since it’s been rainy and colder here, I’ve finally gotten to like the seat heater in the rental car.
I suppose that it just takes some getting used to.
Just like the Volvo’s narrow rear view mirror, which I’m sort of used to now.
Don’t know that I like the fact it has almost no leg room in the back.

I’m going to bed late tonight (again) because I finished up some work on
www.sojournerministries.com.
I’ve implemented a database driven schedule of events section which should
allow them to update the site’s schedule link with ease.
Hopefully I’ll get some time soon to set up some more database driven stuff
and they’ll have even more control over the content with little need for
my help for small changes.
Not that I mind doing it, but that doing it themselves will speed up the turn
around time.

I enjoy web development, but sometimes I find it slow going, mostly when I’m
doing the backend coding, or when I’m doing the front end coding, but
everything else is quick 😉

Resting in Him,

Randy “[something funny here]” Peterman

P.S. This is the 140th article in the database. Wow, I’m either prolific, or long winded 😉

WorldClient is the name of the program that I work on for Alt-N Technologies.
Today I got the ‘go ahead’ to put together a training session for the tech support folks to help them better understand the way WorldClient works.
Working on the training lesson is fun, it really focused my thinking to different areas of the program.
I usually am doing one thing: programming new features, or another: debugging those features.
Talking about WorldClient will be neat, and I hope that my ‘students’ will enjoy listening and will have a lot of questions.
I love to teach, it excites me to know that others want to know what I know.

Hopefully most of what I put into the training material I’ll be able to roll into the customization documentation.

Tweaks and Changes to this Site

Though they’re minor I’ve made a few changes:

• Changed the title bar some
• Added a link to the latest book I’m reading
• Fixed the perma-links for the day view

I’ve got more pictures of Abby to put up, but I had to put my work for www.SojournerMinistries.com first.

Resting in Him,

Randy “Web Monkey” Peterman