Well, I’m home for a couple of days - between the funeral and the auction sale. On the drive home last night, we were almost exactly halfway home (two hours away) when it started to rain. It wasn’t so bad at first, but almost instantly it was raining so hard that I couldn’t see past the front of the car. I had slowed already because the roads had standing water on them, so I managed to pull the car off to the side of the road by looking out the side window to tell where the road was. I’ve never seen rain quite like that before. Before too long, it turned into hail, as Erin and I sat there at the side of the road hoping that nobody would come along behind us and hit the car. After about five or ten minutes, we continued on, though the rain was still heavy, visibility was back to a more reasonable level. Scary stuff - especially since there was a truck with a horse trailer right in front of us when the water descended. It rained the rest of the way back home (though not nearly so heavily.)

I like thunderstorms - just not when I’m driving.

More webMethods training this week, so I won’t have much time for this site.

Uncle Robert - if you’re reading this, could you send me the writeup that was read at the funeral? Thanks.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women.” - Homer

I was at an IBM presentation on Linux on the Mainframe (and every other piece of hardware that they sell) so no time to do a post today. Sorry.

Wait - wouldn’t that make this a post? Oh well, since I’m doing one anyway… The funeral is Monday, so I think we’re leaving town Sunday, coming back Monday, then driving out again Friday for the auction sale. All in all, that’s a lot of driving for one week. Fortunately I’m in training next week (Tuesday - Friday) so I can deal with being a little tired.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Conserve your precious hatred for the game!” - Apu

My mom called, first thing this morning when I got to work, to tell me that my Grandmother had passed away. It’s a very different thing than when Grandpa passed away late last year, in that Grandma has had Alzheimer’s for a long long time, and has been in the hospital for quite a while as well. Apparently it was a stroke, and everything was over quite quickly, which is a good thing. It’s never easy to lose someone, but Grandma’s been gone for a long time already, just that her body was still working.

That means that I’ll likely be gone a significant portion of next week between the funeral, and the auction/estate sale.

I got a request in the comments about what games I bought, and so I thought I’d let you in on it. I got “Kill Doctor Lucky” as well as “Save Doctor Lucky” and the expansion “Save Doctor Lucky on Moon Base Copernicus.” I also picked up “Deadwood” and it’s four expansions. I’m not sure when I’m going to get a chance to play them though ;)

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Oh look at me! I’m making people happy! I’m the magical man from Happyland, in a gumdrop house on Lollipop Lane!” - Homer

Well, the site was down for most of the day, mainly because my IP changed overnight, and the dynamic ip script that I was working with was pretty brutal. It was taken from the “Coyote Linux FAQ” - which is where I was pointed when I asked how to do it. Sadly, the thing I wanted to do was not in the faq (ie. submit an http request to a server) but I adapted the “Email me when my IP changes” script to do the job. All I changed was the part that involved mail - ie. I didn’t change any of the “trigger” code, since I figured that it must work properly.

Well, since I didn’t really have much time to play with it, I didn’t really examine the code (should be pretty simple, right? I mean, how could you screw it up?) Well, since it didn’t fire properly last night, I thought I’d look at it. It was so full of problems, I don’t know where to start. I think I got it working, though I don’t know that the http-request part is working, and there’s really no way for me to test it (short of taking the site down again) Bah!

My Cheapass games came in yesterday. I’m looking forward to trying them out. Should be fun.

Simpsons quote of the day: “Bart, don’t ask stupid questions.” [to Marge] “Is there any frontal nudity?” - Homer

I have to keep this short, since I only have half of my lunch hour today. Why? Well, I signed up for a Fertile Minds presentation at work today. Basically learning about how if it wasn’t for high yield farming, we’d all be hungry, and we wouldn’t have any trees to climb, or monkeys to throw their faeces at us. Not a lot of new information (to me) there, but some interesting ways to bring it all together into a coherent whole.

*Peek over my shoulder* There, that should keep them at bay for a little while ;)

I’ll do a Don Cherry now… See Don likes to make a million predictions, then when one comes true, he makes sure that he shows it on Coaches Corner. Last night, he was talking about Carolina’s defense pinching, and how it cost them the OT goal. Know this: If the goal had been scored any of a dozen different ways, defenseman’s stick in the way, traffic in front etc, Don would have been gloating over how right he was then too. Anyway - enough Cherry talk. My Cherry thing is how I said that the Wings would win because they don’t let up once they have a team down. Well, do they? Did they? Will they? No. Carolina did in game two, and look how that turned out for them.

This is the part of “Greg’s Corner” where I make sure that Ron MacLean knows that I’m the only reason people come to this website, and the whole internet would be nothing without me. Then Ron nods his head and says “yes, but we’re not renewing your contract for next year.”

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Make way for Willy!” (Thump) “I told ye t’make way, din’t I?” - Willy

This Japanese TV show is strange, but at the same time, it sounds quite entertaining. Still, it’s wrong. But people would watch it, I’m sure. Kind of like puppets rubbernecking.

If that last paragraph made any sense to you, congratulations. Not much happening on the weekend. Erin’s Aunt’s 50th birthday party went off well last night - lots of good food etc. As we were driving over there, Erin was re-reading the invitation. She got to the part about it being “potluck” and realized that we didn’t have any food to bring. We ended up stopping at a safeway, and picking up some macaroni salad and potato salad. Kinda felt stupid…

I’ve been watching some soccer lately - some of it’s been quite good, and some of it has been quite boring. I tend to pick a team about 1/4 of the way through the game, and cheer for them, for whatever reason. Then I realize that I really have nothing invested in who wins, so I start just cheering for whoever has possesion at that point in the game. Makes for enjoyable sports watching, since my team always wins (unless it’s 0-0, which sucks)

Simpsons quote of the day: “When you participate in sporting events, it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how drunk you get.” - Homer

We’re officially an insane Ultimate team now - we played last night until it was too dark to see the disc any more. The final score was 12-10 for the other team, but we had pulled off our usual comeback - after being down 7-2 after the half… I think if we’d played longer, we might have won the game. That’s not what makes us insane though. What makes us insane is the weather that we played in - it was raining, and the wind was gusting, and it was cold. We all had a good time though, and that’s what it’s all about.

I think the thing about Ultimate that makes it fun is that no matter what your skill level, you can still make a great play every now and then, if not catching, then throwing, or defense.

I am really looking forward to the weekend though - I’ll get a chance to catch up on some of that sleep that I’ve been lacking lately, and maybe get some time for a couple of projects that I want to work on.

With TV being all in re-run season, plus the fact that there’s hardly any hockey left to watch, I should be able to motivate myself to do some of those things I’ve been planning for a long long time.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Default? Woo hoo! The two sweetest words in the English language: de-fault! De-fault! De-fault!” - Homer