captbrando's log

Dunno about you folks back in Texas, but damn the weather is nice up here! Of course, I do realize that it will be extremely NOT nice in a few months. While we will be enjoying 50-60 degree Novembers/Decembers, its surely not the same up here!

I just found out I’ve got to make a run to Austin next week, so I’ll be there and hopefully I’ll get a chance to have a beverage or two with James!

Anyway… I’m trying to wrap a few things up here so I can head back to the hotel…. More later.

Happy birthday you old fart!

Oh well! I thought summer was on its way out but it sure has come back with a vengeance this week! I hear that a cold front is coming through this weekend and by Sunday it will cool down a little bit. I certainly hope so!

Boy what a cluster tonight. I get a call from the showing folks at 6:00pm tonight. They say “We have an agent who wants to show it between 6:30 and 7:30pm tonight.” I say, no problem. Of course, this hoses our grilling out plans (good thing I did not start the fire!). So I bust ASS cleaning the house for 30 minutes. You know, vacuum, kitty litter, etc. I leave and come back at 7:15. Nothing. Noone has come by (at least no one signed the book). I leave again until 7:30. Still nothing.

Chris gets home, brings dinner. We’re sitting down watching a movie and at 8:10 the doorbell rings. Of course, the one of the two of us to start throwing expletives is not me for a change. I calm her down and answer the door. The agent says “Didn’t they call you?” I say, “Yeah, they said between 6:30-7:30.” She says.. “Oh no… I have 7:30-8:30”. Well great.

So I ask her to give us a few minutes. Chris says a few more expletives (I know, you are saying, but she is such a sweet girl! Yeah… Watch hockey with her…) and we gather up our food and head out the door. The couple who was coming to see the house looked entirely beaten by this point, and their two little kids probably had something to do with it. They stayed at the house for a total of 10 minutes. Did not take a flyer, CD or notebook. But their kids sure had a fun time in the cat toys! EVERYWHERE! Sheesh, where is the respect?

Anyway, so we came back and finished our movie. She’s drawing up a bath (hopefully she will sleep better tonight), and I’m getting ready to head to bed.

Gotta love the house-on-the-market game!

We got to hear the heartbeat of the kiddo today! Freddie the Fetus is alive and thumpin! What an amazing sound to hear. I’ll make sure Chris posts something about the experience

Wendi was telling me about this last night, but here is the story. Dave Matthews and the Big Stink.

Man just did not enjoy the sleep thing last night. After I got home last night, Chris and I watched the Family Guy marathon on Fox, did a little computer work, and went to bed. Not much sleep for either of us I think tho. She said she did not sleep well, I said the same.

We’ve got another doc appt today! Nothing special happens in this one, just a checkup. Maybe I can get Chris to blog over at brandoandchris.com…. we’ll see…

As I am enjoying these days without school (ok, so I am helping to teach, but its a little different on this side of the table), I am finding that catching up on reading is definitely something that is possible. The problem is, I’m continually adding to my reading list and it does not seem to be getting any shorter. Right now, I am reading a study guide by Gordon West for my Amateur Extra radio license as well as I Can See You Naked! by Ron Hoff. Great book on becoming a better presenter.

I hope to finish both by the end of next week. I’ll be traveling next week so that should be a reasonable goal. I’ll also bring another book just in case I decide to go crazy one night and read everything like on our vacation this year.

I can’t wait for fall to finally show up. Football, cool mornings, hell, cool afternoons for that matter. MMmmmmtasty.

I’ve been up for a while because I have a client in Ft. Worth that I have to be at this morning. Gotta love the hour and a half drive (sometimes two if I’m lucky!) that sits before me. Man, I can’t wait to move. Anyone wanna buy a House?.

Pros:

• Close to Oklahoma
• Quiet
• We can buy beer & wine in grocery stores now.

So I’m observing a graduate class earlier this evening and I get to campus about 15ish (more like 10, but who’s counting?) minutes before class is to start. I had been up at Barnes & Noble picking up a couple of texts that needed updating since the last one was almost 2 decades old and grabbing some dinner at Chipotle. Mind you, 15ish minutes before class is supposed to start.

I notice there is a guy working on the computer in the classroom. Now we are all newfangled and PowerPoint everything, so its important to get it all working. Its not. Guy can’t even get the computer to log in. In comes young female employee. No go. Instructor decides he will drive back to his office (20 minutes round trip) to go get his laptop just in case. He left as class was about to start.

The folks working on the computer think that something is broken in the installation (which was determined to be the case) and decide to roll in a new computer to save the day! Only, it takes just about 10ish minutes to get it going. They do get it going just as the prof was walking in the door with his laptop. Unfortunately, it was almost 7pm by this time (30 minutes after the class was supposed to start) and there is always a ton of stuff to go through on the first day. Heh, gotta love how technology can just stick it to ya when you rely on it most (Uhh.. Murphy? You and your masachistic law!).

We did get through most of the material, and I am really looking forward to teaching this stuff (because to teach is to learn over and over again!). I won’t be able to do it as good as the current prof, but maybe someday I’ll be at that level. Course… 80% of success is just showing up, so I figure I’ll be ok there

Its time to sleep now, so I’ll be saying goodnight.

I forgot to mention (among all the craziness of the new site and all…) that I passed my 5-wpm Morse Code (Element 1) exam and the General Exam (Element 3) this weekend so I am a General Class Amateur now. I’m studying for Amateur Extra but the morse code is behind me now. I also got accepted into the Collin County Amateur Radio Emergency Service so in disasters I will be helping out (like these folks did) as a volunteer. When we move, I’ll hopefully quickly become a part of the Denton ARES group and eventually go through the storm spotter training early next year. Fun stuff!

Strangely enough, after the big mass upgrade I did on this server yesterday, it appears that the PHP Command Line package has totally forgotten about the modules that were added to the system. Not that there are tons of processes that use it, just one and it emails me every time it runs. Nice.

I’m off to the dentist this AM. I’ll catch you on the flip side.

Hey folks! Welcome to the new site! There will no doubt be some style changes as I get my hands around this new CMS I have here. For those more technically inclined, I decided on b2evolution for its code maturity, ability to work within PHP/SQL environment, and its ability to import.

Now you can comment on my posts and boy am I looking forward to that… Also RSS and other fun stuffs. Enjoy!

After doing some serious reflecting on what exactly this site should end up being, I think there will be a new revision forthcoming. I’ve decided that the majority of the meat behind this site is this blog (however sporadically updated lately) and the Photo Gallery. I’ll take the rest of the junk (resume, whitepapers, etc) and move it over to a new site that will strictly be a resume site. Its time to truly separate these two out.

I think I’m leaning towards a moveable type setup over the Zope setup. I’ve become addicted to RSS lately so I’ll definitely create a feed for everyone regardless of the way that I go. I’ve become lazy in code writing for my own sites lately and just figure that I’ll conform to everyone else .

At any rate… I hope to have at least the personal site done by the end of the month, and I’ll finish up the resume site by say end of Sept hopefully. Need James to come up and do some head shots of me. James? WHERE ARE YOU?

Enjoy your weekend!

Personal feelings aside, this video which former Mayor Rudy Guiliani says “Every American Should See” is pretty amazing. Check out John Kerry, on Iraq.

Boy it sure was! We had our first sonogram of the baby (Chris is 10 weeks along) yesterday and we confirmed that there is really something growing in the baby oven! See if you can find its head and tail! What a humbling experience. It was really cool to see that little dude (only 2.4cm at this point) wiggling around in there. Definitely put on a show just for us.

Then about 4 hours after seeing our first kiddo, I graduated! MBA degree in hand. Another humbling experience for sure. You would not think going to a graduate graduation would be that big of a deal, but we had 95 people show up to grauduate and the sports center was just about full of people. I was glad to have my wife, sister and parents there as they screamed the loudest when my name was called. I got my hood, picked up my diploma and sat back down. We then had a little reception at the school and bugged out.

Now after we have all recovered, Chris is off to work, I’m cleaning the house up a bit and our niece is coming up soon. She’ll nap here and then we’re headed over to Dave & Buster’s for some celebration fun.

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Hey folks, been a busy week. I did get clearance to Graduate! YAAY! So I guess they give out MBAs to anyone these days I’ll be official on Friday.

No bites on the house yet, but it is late in the season and we hopefully did not miss our window. I know our house will sell eventually, and hopefully we can still get a great deal when it is time. Even though I know we are both going to miss our current house AND the awesome area of McKinney, I’m looking forward to moving on to the next chapter of our life as it relates to houses.

I’m wrapping up some travel to Houston today and BOY IS IT HOT! Good gracious it is boiling down here. I hear it is pretty close to the same up in Dallas as well, so I’m going home to not much of a relief. I also do understand a cold front will be coming through tomorrow which should make our weekend quite beautiful. James and I are going to crash the boat on Friday, so that should really help keep things nice.

Have you seen the news about this concert series made up of folks such as Dave Matthews, the Dixie Chicks and others? As soon as I heard that the Dixie Chicks and DMB had an announcement this morning, I just knew there was trouble. Its basically an Anti-Bush, Pro-Change (Kerry of course, I doubt that they would try to join ranks behind Nader) campaign. Freedom of speech is definitely a beautiful thing, but so it the freedom of choice. I’m considering cancelling our trip to see him in Houston this year. Its only in a few weeks and we probably could use the time back at home anyway. I’ll keep everyone posted on if there will be a pair of tickets available.

Anyway… I’ll be updating more soon.