Departmental Lunch Today

Today we had our Technology group luncheon. It was good to get out with the group and learn a little about each other. URS, being a large company, is rather formal with a lot of Do’s and Don’ts and being a West Michigan group conservative and it make getting together a little difficult.

I guess I talked about Clive Custler yesterday but I listened to the BOT all the way home and was watching out for deer like crazy along route 50. The time just slid by and pretty soon I was home. I was surprised to find was some peanut butter fudge and fruit cake waiting for me – I pigged out.

I only have one remaining URL active on DNS2GO and this is virtualmoore.com. I would like to find some place to put it but there are a lot of pictures of airplanes and these are big. I am not sure how much server space will be made available free of charge. Maybe I can put them there over the holidays. DNS2GO just got too expensive for the service they provided – $100 per year. Originally, the first one was free and the next level was $25 but there was the price creep and enough is enough.  I use godaddy.com for most of my domains and a few hosting accounts.  I may pare back on a few of the URL’s too – Anyone want to buy ITSAMERICA.ORG?

ITS Michigan

I drove to Detroit this AM for a 1000 meeting of the BOD of ITS Michican (Intelligent Transportation  Society).  Their website is www.itsmichigan.org for those interested.  Our main focus has been VII for the past several years and the Federal Govenment made a major focus shift in the last month and it was the topic of conversation for much of the meeting.  How do we keep Motown in the mainstream of automotive safety, telematics and smart car development?  It is a deep and complicated subject.

After the meeting Carrier & Gable hosted a luncheon at Orchard Ridge Country Club.  It was a very good meal and we thank  C&G for their generosity.  The drive back to R was a non-event as I was listening to a Clive Custler book on tape.  It is the typical NUMA series but is entertaining and is non-profane but can get a bit violent at times.  Just my kind of mall music books on tape.  It does not require too much thought.

Snow, Wind and Ice

The Monday AM drive the drive to GR was not too bad once I hit the Interstate and the trip only took 15 minutes more than usual.

Last night I did some shopping and bought a book and a vest.  Christmas presents you know.  SAM has stated what presents I am to get SAM and it is impossible for me to get the correct things so I guess it will be a cash present unless something changes

Tomorrow it is Detroit for a meeting of ITS Michigan and I cannot miss this one as the goodies and a great dinner are in store for us.

Time Flies!

I cannot believe it has been 9 daqys since I have written in my blog.  The Christmas Season is upon us and SAM is working hard cleaning the house today and I just spent 3+ hours outside with the snowblower digging us out of the 10″ of snow we received last night.  I could not get down to the pavement level as the snow was to wet and got stuck in the snow blower.  I would guess there is still about 2″ still on the driveway.  Predicitions are for more snow and the radar is tending to confirm that fact.

The problem with the driway is that it is very wide and about 75′ long.  The only option is to start on the leeward side and blow the snow down wind.  Usually I start in the middle and blow the snow to the east as it is almost always the leeward side.  Today I started at the far east side and just kept plowing eastward all the way across.  this meant that I had to retrace places already done as the blower only shoots the snow about 10-12 ft.

It has been relatively busy at work with the Indiana Project.  We had our last meeting of this year on the 13th and it lasted all day.  I arrived back in PL about 0545.  I was pretty tired and it has take all weekend to recover.

The evening of the 14th was spent at our church Christmas Party from 4-6PM.  It was fun and there were many new people as the invitation was open to RISE and nursing homes.  It was snowing as we left and drove one of the young church members to his home in Ashley.  We took the long way around through Hudson and got back around 1830 hours.

Christmas Letter

I just finished the Christmas Letter 2007 I started earlier in the week at the hotel one night.  I added a few pictures and saved the Word 2K document.  I make two versions of the letter – one for family and one for friends.  Before I closed the Family one I made a pdf of the document too.  After I had sent off the email with both the Word and pdf version from a pre-configured list I started getting bounces from hotmail and then others.  All said the files were too big.  When I checked the word doc it was 11meg and the pdf was 1.6Meg.  I wrote an apology and sent off just the pdf to everyone.  So far none have bounced.  I will still catch some flak since at least one still uses dial up for email.  I will probably send out the friends one tonight too.  Maybe I will do it right after I finish this posting.

The weather was grey all day and there is snow on the ground so I would guess the leaves will remain where they are until spring.  It is December and we usually finish way before this time of year.  It has been a strange year for most everything.

Last night I struggled with trying to import the Greymatter bloglines from my other server but was unable to get anywhere.  It is probably time to call Marc and see what he might know.  I have had that blog up since 2003 but somehow the data got corrupted and was destroyed but at least all of 2007 is there.  Now how to get it into the new server.

Snow!

I arrived back in Indiana about 1900 hrs and found about 3″ of snow on the ground.  GR only received about 1/2″.  Good SAM cleaned the driveway and it was down to blacktop by the time I got home.  I ate the McDonalds #2 while driving home so I was ready to meditate for a while.

After that I decided to work on the site front page for a few minutes and add some of my favorite comments.  This is now done and I am listening to a CD that Jon Alaura gave me a few years ago.   It is a CD of sounds that is kind of new age relaxing but yet stimulating – it must be all the alpha, beta and theta waves conflicting.

Write Christmas Letter

Tonight I started the Christmas letter.  I always wait until it is too late to mail anything.  Of course , now that email is ubiquitous procrastination is not so evident.  I have two lists to send the letter to – friends and family.  In years past there were less personal things in the “friends letter”.  I may just send one letter out this year.  I expect to finish and dispatch it this weekend.

I just now returned from eating late – 2100 hrs.  I guess everything is late this day.  I forgot to set the alarm so I did not even wake up until 0800 hrs and had to rush to work.  I’ll set the alarm tonight for sure

Turtle Internet

I have never seen such a slow internet as this room has.  It takes 5 minutes just to load a page.  I think I will write the management.  I do not want to make myself stress out so  I’ll drop the subject.

It looks like a storm is going to hit Indiana tonight but miss us up here in GR.  Sorry Sam.  I am going to try surfing again if this blog line goes through.  BTW- I am taking the days off for Christmas so it will be 9 continous days.  My manager has not commented so maybe it woun’t matter if I put in for the time – earlier retirement.

Slow Drive In , Good Meal, New AP & a joke

The drive in this AM took close to 3 hours due to intermittant icy roads.  I made it about half an hour later than usual.

The regualr fish oriented meal at Braun’s tonight was good as usual and the waitress was the normal one Andy & I use when he comes to town.  Total cost including tip $8.25.

I bought a new wireless interconnect device.  It is a DLink DWL-G730AP.  It is a three function device that can act as an Access Point mode, Client mode and Router mode.  I thought it would be pretty cool.  It does work in client mode OK but what a pain in the rear end to configure.  First you have to change TCP/IP from DHCP to a fixed class C IP.  Second you have to configure the Client mode to search for available wireless points and then third you have to go back to DHCP.  It is much more difficult than a wireless card.

If you read this far then here is a funny – UNDERSTANDING ENGINEERS – TAKE TWO
To the optimist, the glass is half full.
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

Icy Saturday & Wet Sunday

It was cold and icy Saturday with the temperature hovering around 23  degreeds when I arose.  There was a light but cold wind from the NE but we collected the abundant leaves (about 4 loads) that were sort  of wind rowed.  To our surprise the ground was frozen as the tractor & vacuum crunched and packed the leaves into the Agri Vac.  Friday I called Agri Fab to get an new tube that goes from the shreader to the wagon -$100 ouch.  After 5 years of crunching an bunching things are starting to break.  We went to town in the evening and the roads were quite slippery on the return with max speeds of 15mph.

Sunday AM it was cool as we went to church and quite warm we we left the church (51 degrees).  It started to rain shortly thereafter and continued all day until about 1800 hrs.  After church we went to the apple orchard and bought another peck of “Gold Rush” apples and a peck of cooking apples (seconds).  SAM spent the afternoon crunching and cooking the apples – the result was a quite pleasant tasting but tart apple dessert.

After a brief nap we went to Meijers and Wal-Mart to get groceries and some more presents.  I got out of the shopping part and stayed in the truck listening to a book on tape – a Sci-Fi.  As I write we have just completed our meditation session & started another load of washing.

I think it is supposed to get cold tonight and a winter mix is about to descend upon us.  This will make the drive to GR tomorrow real fun.  They are forcasting  an inch of snow and winds to 27 mph with a low temp of 31.  The salt trucks will be out tonight again I think.