A Day in the Life of Randy

7:00 AM – Wake up.
Lay there sleepy-like for a few minutes.
Jessica asks, “Are you going to go to the store and get the ammunition I need before going to work?”
Forgetting that I’m tired I got up and showered and headed to Albertson’s.
Buy the ammunition, which you can get at most stores in Texas.
Fill the gas tank in the Stratus, noticing gas prices have jumped nearly 15 cents per gallon.
I think that the price jump has to do with the Democrats’ caucus.

8:05 AM – get to work a few minutes late.
Seems like those few minutes late happen more often than I’d like.
Gotta work on that – though I stay later than 5:00 PM Monday-Thursday to make up the time.
Start reading Email, quickly run through RSS in case there’s something worth noting.
Then, open the newsreader and secondly Trillian.
Note: Don’t open yourself to the distraction of IMing unless you have to.
IMing is like a time sucker.
Only IM when you’re ready to do nothing or are on a ‘low work level’ day.

9:00 AM – finally done with the ‘information filtering, get started on some WorldClient (WC) work.
WorldClient is generally my focus with the exception of various other little tasks, but WC is my life at Alt-N.
Bugs are evil, we must destroy them all if at possible.

12:00 PM – Have lunch with Charles Baker.
Charles is a friend from my Tyndale days.
We like to talk about music, theology and life in general.
He and I always seem to connect near instantly, I am grateful for that.

1:20 PMStarbuck’s.
Charles loves coffee, but since his heart issue, he’s stuck with decaf.
I should have thought about that when I ordered my regular soy-latte with a
shot of sugar-free vanilla (not that caffeine is always good for me anyway).
Charles and I talked until just after 3:00.
No matter what the problems are in life Charles and I always walk away with, “The Lord has blessed us in this, even if we don’t understand it.”
That’s what scripture teaches and its good to have a friend to walk through that with.

3:33 PM – Check the mail as I come home.
After I got home Jess tells me that Abby has been a hand full today.
Not a big surprise, Abby is a climber now, she’s stopped walking and running, everything must be climbed, I blame Gymboree, where she learns about climbing.
Fortunately Abby’s down for a nap so Jessica and I get some time to talk.
Jessica was wiped out from Abby and is still recovering from her sickness earlier this week (energy wise, other than that she’s 100%).

4:00 PM – Oprah’s on, Jessica watches it to see Jennifer Garner (who turns out to be the last guest and for 5 minutes only) and to rest.
I start cleaning up around to help my exhausted bride.
Abby wakes up and Jessica calls her dad and talks for 35-45 minutes while I try to watch Abby and clean at the same time.
This is of course a reminder that Jessica can multi-task and I cannot.
Women multi-task so much better than men (usually, that’s a generalization).

6:45 PM – Take my tired wife and energetic daughter out to dinner to help Jess relax.
Call Dave O’Hara to see if we can stop by the hospital to meet Mekena after dinner – he says Yes!
Eat dinner as fast as possible after being seated, and then order dessert for Jessica to go.

8:05 PM – Head to the hospital room and knock on the door.
Come in to see a beautiful little girl in her proud daddy’s arms.
Dave is an excited dad (appropriately so) and his little girl looks tiny in his large arms (Dave’s brother Shaun O’Hara plays for the Cleveland Browns if that tells you anything).
Mekena is truly beautiful, she’s a sweet little girl who cries quietly.
Her mom comes out from the little hospital bathroom looking wiped out, but happy to be a mommy.
Darlene went from 0-60 (fully dilated) in 3 hours – that’s fast!
Dave said he got about 30 minutes of sleep at a time and kept waking up to check on his little girl – I did that with Abby, too.

8:30 PM – Head home.
After sitting and chatting with Dave and Darlene we headed out.
I wanted to stay and talk some more but I had to keep thinking of them, tired, having to take care of the baby, and a nurse came in to help with something, so I thought it was time to go.
We got home, put Abby to bed, and then caught most of John Stossel’s report on the top 10 lies, myths and things people believe
It was pretty informative, and I generally didn’t have anything to believe.
I can’t believe that people don’t know most of what he said, because it’s things I’ve already heard.
However, he really debunked much of what the media has propagated along side radical special interest groups like the environmentalists, liberal gun control groups, and the educators of our school age children.
I heard some of the weird stuff from my college environmentalism teacher.
The thing is that most of what they taught was imbalanced and not backed by research and facts.

However, this is not a typical day, and should not be considered normal, unless you consider every day is different, so normally they’re different.
Study God’s word, that’ll make this day better, in fact, that’s what I’m going to do next.

Happy Birthday Rusty Cobb!

Mr. Rusty Cobb, drummer extraordinaire, is 25 today.
He may be getting old with time, but if you see a picture of him, it’ll always be from when he was younger.

Resting in Him,

Randy Peterman

There’s a New Baby Girl in Town

I was very excited today to hear that my co-worker,
Dave
and his wife Darlene had a baby girl, Makena Mae.
Makena weighs in at eight pounds eleven ounces.
She was born at 1:23 PM.
I haven’t seen her or a picture of her yet, but I can’t wait!
Congratulations Dave and Darlene.

I pray that the Lord would bless your marriage and that it would grow
spiritually, emotionally and physically.
I ask that the Lord would allow you to model godly living to your child and
that you would find yourselves in awe of the constant miracles that He
does in the life of your little one (and the lives of your little ones if
He grants you more children).
I pray that you and your children would live long and healthy lives, cut
short only by His return.
May the Lord bless your children with character that will cause others to
remark, “Your parents raised you well.”
And lastly, but certainly not least, may you get some rest these upcoming
months and years so that you will be able to function well in your day to
day tasks.

Seventeen Months of Abby

Seventeen months ago today Abby was born at 2:12 PM.
I can’t believe it’s been so long!
I love her so much!
Here’s a recent picture of her, just for fun.
She’s playing with the vacuum that Grandpa and Grandma Peer got her for
Christmas.
Abby with the vacuum

Resting in Him,

Randy Peterman

Hollywood Homicide

Harrison Ford, Mr. Han Solo, Indiana Jones, Jack Ryan, amnesiatic (Regarding Henry), a fugative, Mr. Larrabee, and a lame real estate agent in Hollywood Homicide (HH).
I can’t believe that he is in this movie.
Actually, I haven’t seen many of the movies he’s been in, but this was a real ‘winner.’
Winner of the Randy is Sad He Saw It award.
This award is not handed out to just anyone, but only the worst.
You have to try to make movies that are weak, have little to no plot line, and rely on cheap jokes.
That’s why Malibu’s Most Wanted won it last year, but this year (even though it was released last year) the movie that is in the lead is HH.

Fortunately there are good parts of the movie, like when… um, hold on, let me think of a good part.
Oh, well, never mind.
There aren’t good parts, and I wouldn’t recommend seeing it.
But you already knew that, I only put bad movies up here.

-Randy

Footnotes

* Ratings are from 0 to 1, this is a fractional scale. Odds are You won’t see me ever give a ‘1.0’ on any occasion, however, it could happen.

Bug Killa

Today at work I squashed bugs most of the day.
That’s the kind of fun I have to choose to have.
The other attitude I could have is that squashing bugs is boring, tedious, and is not as much fun as creating new things.
The real issue is what sort of attitude I’m going to have about my job.
As many people know my job is very nice.
The wages are good, the atmosphere is relaxed, and no animals are harmed during any of the shoots.

The problem with that sort of environment is that you get used to the niceties and when something less than ‘perky’ shows up you can get an attitude.
That’s where my faith in Christ must come in.
I must walk in obedience to him so that I am always rejoicing: for the blessing of my job, for the blessing of the debugging, and for the blessing that thousands if not millions of people have seen and use my code.
I just pray that somehow they’ll see my commitment to Christ in the quality of the software.

It’s also good to work with people who’ve worked for other software companies that stank.
People like Robin, who’s en transit, making her way down from Michigan right now.
She used to work for Deerfield, and is glad that she works at Alt-N.
Not just for the nice environment, but also for the personality of the bosses and the other employees.
Robin has reminded me more than once that we’ve got a great job, and that we work for a great company.

Resting in Him,

Randy Peterman

American Idle Season 3

With American soldiers over in other countries, wondering what may befall them next, it’s good to see that people back here in the states have worked hard to give them some laughter.
I can’t believe that people actually go onto the audition ‘stage’ and ‘sing’ like that.
I have a mediocre voice and know it 🙂

Also, a praise: my dad went to the doctor today and the mole that looked like it may have been problematic is benign!
Pray for Chad and Robin as Wednesday (tomorrow as of this writing) they are heading down here.

Pray that Jessica recovers from being sick today, I had to try to work from home today which is hardly effective when I’m trying to look at HTML+CSS and keep half an eye on Abby whilst trying to get Jessica the things she requires.
Moms, you rock for multi-tasking, I don’t know how you do it.

Resting in Him,

Randy Peterman

New Laptop

I got a new laptop for work.
I’mm using it to write this.
Woo Hoo!
It’s a fast Dell Latitude 600 with 1GB of RAM.
This thing boots up faster than a Britney Spears marriage (30 seconds).

However, I’ve got to use it for work too, which means that I can’t just have fun on it.
I’m really grateful for the generosity of my employer, they’ve supported me and employed me, which is not as common as some may think.

Resting in Him,

Randy Peterman

What a Weekend

We had another weekend in Sherman with Doug and Amanda D.
Doug and I tried to get the kitchen counters put in, and partially succeedded except that we didn’t get the formica on the pressboard.
However, that will be easier than Doug trying to cut the wood by himself.
Abby was pretty good most of the weekend and Jess had a great talk with Amanda on Friday night.

I finally got two (1,2) of the three articles up from jury duty, but I can’t find the third article.
When I find it I’ll get it put up.
Thanks for reading this.

Also, if it comes to mind pray for Chad and Robin this week as they’ll be moving down from Michigan.
Speaking of which, pray for my dad who’s getting a mole removed this week…suspicious little bit of flesh appears to have changed colors.
Also, while you’re praying, pray that the Lord would give us direction on an ‘unspoken prayer,’ and general wisdom about how to serve him, no matter where we are and what we’re doing.

Resting in Him,

Randy “The Builder” (Peterman)

Counter Terrorrorists

Today Doug and I finished the second layer of the counters, screwed and glued the pieces together, screwed the counter to the cabinets and later should cut the hole for the sink and then apply the formica laminate.
Very cool.

More later.

Hit And Run

This morning I went out to the car to go buy syrup for pancakes and discovered that someone hit our Honda Civic in the rear driver’s side quarter panel.
Thanks whoever you are.

Thankfully the car is still drivable, but it will need to get worked on, and I’m sure we’ll have lots of fun driving a rental whilst it gets fixed.

I’m working with Doug to get their kitchen fixed up.
It’s taking longer than expected, but we’re making headway.

I’ll try to get more up later.

Resting in Him

Randy Peterman

Birthday and Christmas Wish List 2004

This is a trimmed version of last year, but will be updated at times.
Birthday present ideas may be found here

Abigail

Jessica

  • Picture Frames-any size
  • Bath & Body works anything-giftcards, lotions-my favorite collection is the pure silk warm vanilla sugar
  • Beauticontrol (www.beauticontrol.com) Warming trend green tea masque
  • Beauticontrol Nourishing eye pads
  • Beauticontrol Therapeutic Bath Minerals
  • Beauticontrol Lip Apeel
  • Creative memories Circle Maker
  • Creative Memories Short Cuts Rick Rack Pack
  • Creative Memories Celestial Patterns
  • Creative Memories Fine tip Standard pens
  • Creative Memories Jewel tones fine tip pens
  • Creative Memories Premier Pink Album
  • Creative Memories 12×12 pages
  • Creative Memories page protectors
  • Wedgwood jasper collection-anything-favorites are the dark blue &pink
  • Victoria’s Secret Dream Angels ‘Divine’ lotion
  • Jewelry
  • Starbucks giftcard(s)

Randy