Hey y'all!

I thought I'd post a little something so people knew I hadn't completely dropped off the planet. Bethanie was nice enough to drop me an email just to check up on me since I hadn't posted anything in so long.

Honestly, I kind of stopped reading people's journals and posting in mine because it was taking up so much of my time. Unfortunately, my habit seemed to have just moved to another board (League of Amateur Gamers, mentioned in last JE). It's a group of guys and gals that like to play on Xbox Live. I've had more time, being the summer and all, to play on the old Xbox, so it's been nice having a large group of people to regularly play with. I'm sure once school starts again in a few weeks, I'll lose my playing privileges due to time constraints.

As for my life, things are still just cruising along. I have my boys right now all by myself since the wife has traveled out of town to visit her sister who just had a baby on Thursday. My wife left Wednesday morning and will be back tomorrow afternoon. This is, by far, the longest she's been away from the kids. They miss her and she misses them. I'm having a great time with them though. We went swimming yesterday at a pool near here and have just been acting like guys. :-)

We found out this weekend that my father's cancer is back. His doctor is giving him 2-6 months, and said he probably won't be here at Christmas time. His doctor is actually a fantastic human being and while it may sound harsh, I know he's just giving him the honest assessment. The news is hitting my mom pretty hard. We'll gonna go visit them next week (they are around 4 hours outside of Phoenix), along with my sister who lives in Colorado. I'm really concerned for my older son also. This will be the first real loss in the family for him. He really loves my dad and calls him his "Whisper Grandpa" because my dad had his voicebox removed as a complication in the throat cancer, so he has to talk with one of those contraptions. Anyway, it's all something we're dealing with as best we can.

So who wants to summarize the last month and a half around here? :-)

I had to drop in to share this finding. I have been attempting to expand my friends list on XBL to include more like-minded individuals who don't have a lot of time to dedicate to gaming, and aren't interest in screaming "NIGGER!" whenever possible. I posted on the Halo 2 Multiplayer Bungie.net board and someone sent me a private message to this site:

The Leage of Amateur Gamers

The tag line, "spawn. die. spawn. die." says it all.

While reading about the Google Mapping API, I came across this article titled "JavaScript Closures". If you've ever used or learned about Ada, it should seem familiar. To those who have never programmed in a language where a function can declare inner functions with closures, it will probably seem like the strangest thing in the world. :-) I had NO idea you could do this in JavaScript (or for the sticklers, ECMAScript).

So what's up?

I decided that I was going to spend an entire week at work without my laptop on. This meant that I would be working, and only working while present at my workplace. So how was it?

Well, it was fantastic. My day went faster, I got lots done, and there were no distractions. Sure, I didn't get to follow everyone's journals, but I was much more productive. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I got all the way to today without reading journals.

Of course, this afternoon I have nothing to do. I mean, really, no work at all. I've been reading some about ASP.NET 2.0 and looking at the Google Map API (very cool), and thought I'd quickly browse through the old journals. Nothing really caught my eye, most of the usual: TMP ranting about Bush, StB telling about how great is life is (cool), stoolpigeon with some really strange websites that are gonna get me fired, etc.

I guess I'll get back to work now. :-)

My wife and I have been helping out the VBS program at our church this year. She's been helping in the crafts department, and I've been working the recreational activity. Last night, we were playing a game (similar to Invasion, if you're familiar with it), and another teacher and I joined in the fun. I was running to the other side, and he was following. I slowed down to pick up one of the other team's balls, and he didn't. So he ended up smacking in to me and we both fell to the ground. I've really jammed up my pinky on my left hand pretty good. Any advice on that?

On our way home, we decided to stop by CVS pharmacy. My wife and some others from church are helping out a family near our church whose house was determined to be "unlivable" by CPS, so she wanted to pick up some cleaning gloves for the work they're doing today. I also thought I might pick up some muscle/sprain reliever or something that might ease the suffering.

Well, why we were there, I picked up our contraceptive of choice (since my wife can't do the birth control pill thing.. makes her ill). After we got the counter, I realized we were purchasing a box of condoms, latex gloves and a tube of Ben Gay. That probably looked interesting.

Looks like I might actually have time tonight to do whatever the heck I want.

So, for anyone in the circle who plays Live, I should be on tonight. Does anyone have Links 2004 or Burnout 3? If not, I guess it's back to Halo 2 for me. :-)

As you may or may not know, I have two young boys. I am preparing them, as best I can, to be men. In order to do so, I've developed the following required watching, which I will soon be purchasing on DVD:

1. The A-Team
2. MacGyver
3. Knight Rider

I'm thinking about throwing in Dukes of Hazaard also. Any thoughts?

(Yeah, I know Knight Rider might be iffy, but it served me well)

I am seeing Episode III tonight. I will be meeting stoolpigeon at a theater, so if you don't ever hear from me again, it's because he has hacked me up into pieces or something.

Far too many great movies get released and are never heard of again. What are your favorite underrated movies? In my top three would be:

• Frequency - Stars Dennis Quaid and Jesus Christ. About a son who manages to contacts his dead father over a radio because of a the northern lights. Yeah, sounds strange, but a great movie. I ball at the end each time due to blatant emotional manipulation, but it is still fun. I watch this every Father's Day.
• The Iron Giant - An animated flick that got lost cause it wasn't by Disney. One of the few WB Animation releases, and it is quite good. It can be a bit scary for the little ones as a warning.
• Defending Your Life - Stars Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep. This is one of my favorite comedies. Story about what "really happens after you die". Anytime I see Rip Torn, I think of his character in this film.

What about you?

Jaguar777 was nice enough to email this instructional piece on turning your hampster into a fighting machine.

Good stuff. And yes, I intentionally spell hampsters wrong because the right spelling is incorrect.

sp is the only one who will probably care, but I'm posting anyway. If not just to mess up your /my/amigos :-)

Georgian Democracy - Apparently, our own Arizona Republic needs a geography lesson.

Suns lose - Am I the only ticked off at the fact that none of the western conference games seem to get televised on ABC? Yeah, I'm one of the few Americans left without cable, so I can't watch the games on TNT. At least the away games are on our local station. Anyway, I'm hoping Joe Johnson's injury isn't gonna cost the Suns their much deserved Championship title :-) Series stands at 1-1.

Weather - Woohoo. It's looks like we'll be breaking the triple digit barrier tomorrow.

Well, it happened. I never thought it would, but it did.

My wife just went to draw out the "weekly cash". The machine told her to take the money, and then gave her a receipt for the withdrawal. Only problem: no money ever came out of the machine.

She went inside and told them what happened. They gave her the "dispute" number to call. They didn't offer for her to use their phone, but just sent her on her way. She made a few comments about "theft" and left. After calling the number, the man was extremely helpful and said that this sort of thing happens occasionally. He said if the machine ends up not "correcting itself" in the next day or two, they could credit us. She clarified that the bank is not disputing the fact we didn't get our money, they just don't want to credit right now in case the machine ends up doing it for them.

Thankfully, it's no big deal for us because we can go to another machine and get our money for now. We don't go paycheck to paycheck, but it is still unsettling for this to happen.

Anyone else have a similar experience?

I'm done, I'm done, I'm done.

I am officially finished with the semester from hell. I took 3 classes this year, two of which had an unusual amount of homework and projects.

I took my last final on Tuesday and turned in my Independent Research Study paper 5 minutes ago. Now I can relax for 5 weeks before my summer class starts up. :-(

Posting and You

Definitely need sound. Audio NSFW.

I don't know if I'm the last person on Earth to discover this website, but I had to share:

The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology (SFW, as far as I can tell)

Daily code snippets, obviously written by Access programmers. (sorry CVR ;-)

Sorry, I couldn't couldn't resist. Thanks for the idea Sam.