Monday, June 30, 2003
I'm in such a weird mood. I want to play and not work. While that may not be terribly unusual, I want to play with the computer. Doesn't make sense does it? I want to program, just not the stuff I'm paid to program.

Let's all scratch our heads together.

Ok. Now pat your belly.

Now stand on one leg and hop up and down.

Don't you feel better now that you have that out of your system?



We will now resume our normal broadcast schedule.

12:08 PM Posted by Big Dave | 0 Thoughts

I've been here for over 10 months now, and I just got business cards. I'm not quite sure what that means as far as my status on the food chain, but since I don't meet with customers, I don't know that I'll ever use them all anyway.

11:50 AM Posted by Big Dave | 0 Thoughts

I'm aware that my comments are not working properly. Blogger has made some major changes recently and I need to update my code to work with their changes. I just don't have time to do it today.

11:15 AM Posted by Big Dave | 0 Thoughts

Well... I have not completely disappeared off the face of the planet. I took vacation last week and went to camp with 400 high school kids. Interesting vacation huh? I went to Glenlake - Methodist Camp and Retreat Center. It's in Glenrose, TX. It's a beautiful camp. I went last year and volunteered for a week when I was in the middle of my job search. It was a good experience and I wanted to go back. Volunteers are put in cabins with the kids and a staff member and then they lead a small group with another staff member. I enjoyed the week and I enjoyed getting to meet a whole bunch of campers.

I'm usually horrible at names, but for some reason it all stuck with me that week. Now I may not be able to tell you ten names now, but it's less important now. There are a bunch of pictures on the web site. I managed to stay out of all but a couple, but I don't see those listed. That suits me just fine.

I managed to come across a Cottonmouth and a Copperhead. Not fun. Especially at night.

One of the campers had asked to go sit outside. While I let him do that, another camper came in shortly and told me the first was chasing a snake. I investigated and told him to go back inside. When I found out what it was, we called the camp staff over to take care of it. It was hunting between the cabins. A very bad place for a venomous snake to be hanging out.

The Cottonmouth was under a walkway that was heavily traveled. Right next to the lake that is in the center of camp. From the markings, we thought it was a bull snake. Non-venomous, but still not something you would like to be bit by. Three of us were working on trying to find a way to get him out of there so that he could be removed and taken somewhere where he wouldn't' have the opportunity to bite a camper. While David A. was tap dancing on the concrete and trying to drive him out that way, Alan came up with a plan to stick a water hose under the walkway, turn it on, and drive him out that way. It sounded like a plan to me. Since I had the most experience catching snakes and the most interest in keeping him alive, I was the one who started feeding the water hose up under the walk way. I guess the snake could sense the gig was up, because he came shooting out from underneath the concrete. I just had a chance to get a good look at him and realize he wasn't a bull snake before he plunged into the water. He had a short fat body and a arrowhead shaped head. Bad signs when you're looking at a snake. Alan laughed at me for a good five minutes because all I could say when he came out was, "There he is! THERE HE IS!"

I got back about noon on Friday. Saturday I went to Celebrate Freedom with Dezi and two of her good friends. I think I was more tired from a day of sitting in the sun than a week of playing with the youth. It was a good day, but I could have done without the 2 hours it took to get out of the parking lot after the concert.

I'll get back to the routine at some point, but I'm not looking forward to having to go to work tomorrow. I'd love to have another day or two to rest.

While I was checking out the link for KLTY it reminded me that I wanted to go to see Beauty and the Beast with the Dallas Summer Musicals. So I found a time, called Desiree and woke her up to make sure it was fine and bought the tickets. We're going to have really nice seats too. I'm all excited. Thursday night. Muhaha. I haven't been there since I saw Phantom of the Opera. I'm all excited now. I guess I should really try to get some sleep though.

Maybe I'm just slap happy, but my spell check couldn't find "Muhaha" and didn't offer any suggestions as to what I should change it to. Oh well... Silly David

2:00 AM Posted by Big Dave | 0 Thoughts

Sunday, June 15, 2003
I had a very pleasant weekend. Saturday was run around and do fun things day. Desiree and I went to the Dallas World Aquarium and the Dallas Arboretum. Desiree took a lot of pictures and put several of them on her web gallery.

We had a good time, but mental note. Don't visit the Arboretum in the heat of the day. Sunday was a very lazy day. I didn't want to do a thing. So I didn't. Sometimes you need days like that though.

I called home several times today and finally managed to get ahold of my parents. I woke my dad up to wish him a happy Father's day. I guess it's better late than never. Happy Father's day dad.

10:58 PM Posted by Big Dave | 0 Thoughts

Wednesday, June 11, 2003
I went to one of my favorite lunch places today (Blimpie's). I was getting a refill on my drink and getting ready to leave when I noticed a flyer for Texas Tornado Hockey. Being a hockey fan and a fan of minor league entertainment (aka cheap) I picked it up and thumbed through it. Apparently I'm going to have a minor league baseball team and a junior 'A' hockey team right next door to work. I'm thrilled. And the tickets look like they are going to be pretty cheap.

1:46 PM Posted by Big Dave | 0 Thoughts

Monday, June 09, 2003
A buddy of mine sent me this link since he and I had discussed my desire to get a laptop over the weekend. http://www.pro-star.com/ Now I have no idea about the quality or service, but the prices are outstanding. I'm going to have to think long and hard about that one.

I had a wonderful time this weekend. We left Friday night after a stop at the new Dallas Freebirds for dinner. I ran into someone I knew from the dorms at A&M. It's a very small world sometimes.

We managed to get to the camp site about 11:00. We were camping next to the river on the Guadeloupe river. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it was nothing like what I expected. The camp grounds were packed. The group we were with was camped on a slope right next to the river. There was no running water in the camp site, and the tents were so closely packed together, that it was difficult to go between the tents in places. The quite peaceful sounds of nature were drowned out by streoes assailing the ear in all directions. The small group I was expecting had almost 40 people. None of the room left was ideal for a tent, but we found one that wasn't too steeply sloped and proceeded to set up my huge 8 person tent that was quickly dubbed the Tajima-tent. Sleeping was almost completely out of the question since it was one large party until all hours of the morning.

Saturday was great, but the river was really cold. It warmed up as the day went along, but someone was shaking so bad that we got out and let them warm up a little bit. We spent about 5 hours on the river. About 2 hours too long, but I had a good time.

While we were chilling out Friday night I heard one of the funniest things I've heard in a long time. "I don't know if I should say this, but you have nice eyebrows. Don't you think she has nice eyebrows? I think she has nice eyebrows."

The parentals got in from their vacation a few hours late and a little frazzled. But being up for over 24 hours will do that to you. My mom IM'd me this morning and told me they were both at work this morning.

5:27 PM Posted by Big Dave | 0 Thoughts

Wednesday, June 04, 2003
Let's see... Status update.

This weekend will involve tubing on the Guadeloupe with several friends from high school.

Last weekend involved the arrival of my brother, his girlfriend, the parental units, my grandmother, my aunt, and my baby cousin. Congregating at my domicile for a short time period. Birthday celebration for brother. Taking the parentals to the air port. The fixing of computers. But no work. A nice change. It's funny to watch the interaction of my parents and Desiree. My dad seems to perk up when she gets there and my mom giggles more. Yes my mom giggles. (Sorry mom, you know it's true)

I had to be up at work by about 7:30 this morning to take care of some things before the users started hitting the system. I'm not a morning person and usually stroll into the office between 8:30 and 9:00. I've already had a very large, very strong cup of coffee, but I'm afraid I'll have to have another before my system decides to recognize that it's actually supposed to be doing something this early.

We had a new Eric start last Friday. I struggled to get his computer set up for two days. It originally came with XP Home, but we loaded Win 2000 Pro on it. It turns out that the manufacturers are no longer sending a recovery CD or a drivers disk. This made things excessively difficult. Especially since we couldn't find the drivers we needed on Compaq's website. We finally got it working after figuring out that the Ethernet card was part of the on-board Via chip. I think I would definitely have preferred to build the system out of components. But that's what happens when we need a machine now. It's not a bad machine, but I was very frustrated with Compaq and Best Buy on several levels.

We finally hit a lull this week. Now that doesn't mean there aren't 10,000 things to do, but at least they aren't all due on Friday.

We got a new assistant youth director at the church. His name is Logan something or other. I haven't been able to speak to him one on one yet, but he seems like an interesting fellow. He was set to go pro in baseball when he threw out his shoulder. Since then he's become a coach and a scout as well as being youth minister.

I have been thinking for a while that I would like to get a laptop. I really like the idea of getting a wireless network card and being able to walk around my apartment or office with it. The only problem is that I want something really powerful which means really expensive. We'll see if I break down and get one. But I want other toys too, so I'm not real sure where this one ranks in the pecking order.

8:09 AM Posted by Big Dave | 0 Thoughts