Pleasant Insurance Experience

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

Bye, Bye Bun Warmer

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

Host With the Most

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

Lamination

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

Warming Up to the Seat Heater

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

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

Toasted Buns

I took the Honda Civic into the body shop this morning.
We get a rental car for the time between now and when the car is done.
It’s a Volvo S40 (I think).
However, when I sat down the seat felt kinda warm.
You know the feeling of when you walk into a room, sit down on a chair and it’s warm?
I don’t know about you, but I don’t care for that feeling.
It makes me think that someone might have passed wind and then escaped trying to hide their guilt.
However, I discovered that Volvo has got seat warmers in the car.

I have a hard time considering this a luxury when in fact I’m really just feally awkward.
Maybe its really my own problem, but I have to say that if I ever owned a car with heated seats I’d never turn them on so that I could drive down the road without feeling like everyone was staring at me thinking, “Was it Him?”

Randy “Hot Pants” Peterman

Silver in Your Kamut

Today as I listened through part of Genesis as I drove I realized more than before how twisted Joseph was when he was dealing with his brothers.
But what hits me more now is that Joseph’s father, Jacob (Israel), had done a real poor job raising his sons.
He did such a hum-dinger of a job showing his children how to love (his wives
being two sisters who were pretty embittered towards one another because
of their father’s trickery and their husband’s love for one more than the
other).
His oldest sons faked the murder of their younger brother, Joseph, who was
later somewhat replaced by his brother Benjamin.
Joseph was not raised with that same level of corruption by his own father
because of his separation.

Later Joseph, being second in command in all of Egypt tricked his brothers,
after of course having God move him into a position of authority.
God works him into a powerful place by blessing his actions and Joseph
returns the favor with trickery, psychological trauma, and weird emotional
games.
Kinda sounds crazy, but at one point in time, to get to spend more time with
Benjamin he has Benjamin arrested for stealing something Joseph had
planted in his grain bag (the grain possibly being kamut).
As second in command he could have simply just said, “Leave Benji here and go
get dad,” to his brothers, but instead he had to be deceitful.
What a guy.
May this be a lesson to us all!

Resting in Him,

Randy “Liar, Liar, pants on fire” Peterman

Gam-bling

Last night we went to GIS2’s soiree.
It was casino night, which is something like playing dress-up as an adult.
To clarify this is what I mean: I mean that adults get dressed up all fancy and then gamble using completely fake money at an instant casino (just add water).
The problem was that they had a two drink limit on the bar.
OK, the first two drinks were free, then you had to pay.
My dillema, because I didn’t know that I was going to have to pay for drinks (non-alcoholic, I had to drive) and I didn’t want to waste my tickets early.
So, to remedy that I had one drink when I got there and held onto the other ticket just in case I got thirsty later, fearing that I’d have the need get one more drink later I never spent the ticket.
It’s now a souvineer for the evening’s events.

My choice in gambling was open to craps, 21, blackjack, poker, slotmachines and cheese.
I ate a lot of cheese.
Since the other tables were generally crowded I chose to play Roulette.
If you’re not familiar with roulette I’ll describe it briefly to you.
Roulette consists of a table covered in felt, a wheel covered in numbers, and a roulette referee to keep the players from illegal holding.
You place chips (corn) on the felt pad which is covered in numbers (1-36 plus other miscellaneous things like even, odd and the like).
After players have placed chips bets, signified by the chips, the referee throws a little ball into the roulette wheel (which is spinning).
Shortly thereafter the ref will declair, “Five yard penalty, offense.”
For this each player must give the ref several chips and salsa.
Just kidding, more than likely you will not get a five yard penalty.
HOwever, you might lose your chips if the ball lands on the wrong part of the wheel.

I kept winning, which means that I stayed pretty much even.
The night ended somewhat young for us because we had to go get Abby from her babysitters (the Black’s).
We appreciated their kindness.

In the end the cheese won, and I’ve been able to reduce my overall intake of beano by 30%.

Resting in Him,

Randy “Big Winner” Peterman

Abby’s Playground

This morning I took Abby to her weekly ‘gymnastics’ class at Gymboree.
Maybe it’s not technically supposed to be gymnastics, but it usually turns out to be a paying play group.
It’s fun none the less.
However, this morning Abby was rather sedate because the class was so large.
Normally she goes on Thursday mornings with Jessica but, as you may recall, Jessica was not feeling well on Thursday.

Abby would play for a while, and then she would walk over to the large mat where the group gathers, sit down and just sway back and forth to the music playing overhead.
I didn’t consider that to be too valuable for the time so I kept getting her up and encouraging her to do other things.
I plan on making her do lots of other things when she becomes a teenager to vicariously become a popular cheerleader.
This of course will cause her to separate herself from me, and in the end we’ll have to switch places due to a fortune cookie switch up so that she’ll understand I love her, and that I’ll know what it’s like to be a teenage girl.
Actually, I have no desire to be a teenage girl.
I think teenage girls don’t want to be teenage girls.
Women don’t want to be teenage girls (many don’t want to be college girls).
In fact, I think that women in many ways wish they were men, mostly because men are so focused and narrow minded.

We as men have put forth a tremendous amount of effort in the last 30 years to make computers that multi-task so we don’t have to.
We have earned ourselves countless hours of extra time simply by making machines that can grill the fat out of our meat, ride on our gas powered lawn mowers, and with a knife slice through an aluminum can effortlessly.
Why would I want to slice through an aluminum can?
Because someone made a knife that can do it.
They make knives for all sorts of culinary things, knives that turn your kitchen into a culinary playground.

I should just buy a set of those knives and let Abby play with them in the kitchen and save the money spent on her indoor playground at Gymboree.

Resting in Him,

Randy “Coach Dad” Peterman