January 2004 Archives

Yeah, I’m back and it’s good to be back.

I feel kind of stupid because I had a three hour layover in Las Vegas last night and, instead of renting a locker for my bags and walking down The Strip or something like that, I stayed in the airport.

I played $13 on the slots and watched the third disc of the “The Lord Of The Rings — The Two Towers — Extended Edition“ (LoTR-TTT-EE) on my laptop.

If there ever is a next time, I promise I’ll get out of the airport and really enjoy myself.

Picture

I took my digital camera to Des Moines, but (a) I didn’t have time to go sightseeing and picture taking and (b) there really wasn’t much to take pictures of, from what I could see.

I did run across one amusing spectacle on my way out of town and captured it on the compact flash card in my camera.

I’ll joke with some of my english-snob friends sometimes about how people forget what an acronym stands for and will add components of the expanded acronym to the acronym, usually to the end. For example, I’ve heard people say, “ISP provider” or “DSL line.” I think the worst abuse of this sort has to be the phrase “ATM machine,” which I’ve heard a lot, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it emblazoned on a sign before. Well, now I have.

This photo was taken in the Des Moines airport near the food court (does one eating establishment count as a “court”?) and the entrance to the baggage claim area.

The “ATM Machine”

I'm home now. Got home at nearly 4 a.m. this morning.

Twenty four hours ago I didn’t expect I’d be where I am now. I’m aboard an America West flight about 30 or 45 minutes out of Las Vegas, NV.

I got around four hours of sleep this last night, but awoke feeling well enough to tackle the day. After taking a shower, grabbing a couple mini-muffins and a banana from the continental breakfast, I took a cab to the training facility.

I was real bummed they hadn’t put the hot items out on the breakfast bar yet when I went down at 6:40 or so. I would have loved some sausage and eggs.

It snowed through the night so there was about six inches or so on the ground this morning where there was only a light dusting of snow when I arrived last night. The cab driver had some difficult finding the facility, but eventually we found it, but it didn’t look like anyone was inside. The driver suggested I go try the door before he left. I did and it was locked.

I was sure what I was going to do at that point. I suggested he pull around the back of the building to see if there was another door in that might be open. There wasn’t but there was a John Deere “Ag Management Solutions” office. I paid the driver and told him I’d wait in there until someone arrived at the training facility.

The door to the John Deere office only allowed people with security badges in, so I had to ring a bell so someone would come get the door. I explained I was teaching for the people next door and just wondered if I could hang out there until someone showed up over there. They said that would be fine.

I learned a thing or two about tractors while I was sitting there in their reception area for 30 minutes or so.

I had the telephone number for the training facility so I called them every 10-15 minutes and finally got through. After I talked to a gentleman there, I walked over and got settled into my classroom. The training facility had already set up Fedora Core 1 on all the systems in the classroom, including the instructor machine/server, so there really was no preparation to do. I set up my laptop so I’d have a machine I could use to check e-mail and IM when I had a chance.

I had twelve students in the class and they all seemed I.T. oriented from various backgrounds including Windows, Novell, and Unix. All in all, During the first half of the day, we concentrated on the Linux installation under Red Hat or Fedora and concluded with a lab in which the students reinstalled everything on their computers.

Then we broke for lunch. After lunch, I got a message from GuruLabs that I needed to call them. I called and they told me they had run into a problem with one of the other classes where a GuruLabs instructor and another instructor both showed up to teach the same class. This was a problem and would cost them some money. The decided to minimize the damages by sending the now-free instructor to Des Moines and sending me (the contractor) home.

I feel bad I wasn’t able to finish the class, but I’m not upset.

I told the class they would have a new instructor tomorrow to finish out the rest of the week and we finished up the next section of the class which was on post-installation configuration and Red Hat’s kickstart.

My flight to Las Vegas left Des Moines shortly after 9 p.m.

I thought the Des Moines airport felt more like a high school than an airport. I kind of expected to see rows of lockers embedded into the walls of the terminal corridors. But, it’s not too shabby.

When I approached the security checkpoint, I was the only non-staff person in the corridor (yeah, real quiet night at the Des Moines airport). The security personnel proceeded to have me take off my shoes and coat, remove my laptop from its bag, and put everything through the X=Ray scanner. I was instructed to stand at the entrance of the metal detector for about 4 minutes while the personnel shuffled around on the other side. Finally, one of them motioned me through the metal detector and informed me that I had been selected for a detailed search and body wand scan.

I looked around and muttered something about being the ONLY person they could pick at random at that time, but it was obvious they were under orders not to acknowledge my humour. WHile they were wand scanning me as I stood in a crucify-me position, two or three other people went through every item in my carry-on luggage, carefully inspecting each item. One of them, a chubby kid, got all excited when he pulled out a small metal gadget out of my fanny pack that looked like some kind of lethal instrument of terror. It was just my space pen, but I was concerned it was going to be confiscated.

And here I am... getting closer to Las Vegas where I’ll lay over for some time until I catch a 12:30 a.m. flight, arriving in Salt Lake City around 2 a.m. I called my brother earlier about picking me up.

Kind of a bummer I was able to finish the class- we could use the extra cash. I tried to make it clear to the guys at Guru Labs that I would be gleefully willing to do 2 classes a month for them. I don’t feel comfortable committing to more than that right now beause it would (a) take me away from my family too much and (b) make it next to impossible to contirbute to Iodynamics in a productive way.

Alright. I’m going to try to catch a few winks of sleep before we land in Sin City. I wonder if I could get a lapdance at the gate. If you can’t now, it’s probably only a matter of time until you can. Heh heh.

(Note: Christine made the observation that the previous paragraph insinuated that I wanted to get a lapdance in Vegas. I guess I was more trying to make the point that it wouldn't surprise me if that was a service you could easily get at the Las Vegas airport someday.)

Guess what I learned tonight! Thrifty Car Rental at the Des Moines airport closes at 11 p.m. even if flights into the airport are delayed past that point.

Guess what else I learned tonight! Des Moines has some really nice (but not cheap) cab drivers.

Oh, and the Des Moines Courtyard is nice. Nice Internet access. My only beef was that my room was 90°(F) when I walked in. I’ve been trying to cool it down since.

I was supposed to be in Des Moines, Iowa by now. But, I'm not.

Instead, I'm just barely leaving Cincinatti.

I guess Cincinatti got a load of freezing rain and snow just before our flight from Salt Lake City was to land. They closed the runways because of “nil braking action.” The pilot came over the P.A. and said he wasn't sure what was going to happen, that we might have to land somewhere else, but in the meantime, we'd circle in the air.

So, circle we did. For an hour until the Cincinatti airport managed to open one of their runways.

Originally, I was supposed to have a layover in Cincinatti of about one hour. When I arrived, I had about 2-3 minutes to catch my next flight at its scheduled time. When I got off the plane checked the departures on the video monitor in the terminal, I discovered my flight to Des Moines had been delayed thirty minutes from 9:15 to 9:45.

I breathed a sigh of relief, called Christine and let her know what was going on, and headed over to the C terminal where my flight was departing from. Well, 9:45 came and went. They finally let us on the plane around 10:20. Once everyone was on board, they told us it would be another 45 to 60 minutes before we'd take off because the plane had to get in line for de-icing.

Fortunately, my very, very good friend Thom (of Sons Of Nothing fame) gave me two DVDs to watch and I brought them with me. One was Pink Floyd Live in Pomeii - The Director's Cut and the other was Rush In Rio.

I watched the Pink Floyd DVD on the way to Cincinatti and loved it. I watched the original video years ago on VHS and remember a lot of it well. The director updated the film with some modern footage including computer animated bits which, while impressive, kind of clashed with the circa-1972 film. But, overall, I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed all the extra footage and interviews. The members of Pink Floyd made me laugh out loud a couple times and I'm sure my cabin-mates on the plane were curious what that was all about. The guys next to me probably thought I was a nut case if they looked over and saw what I was watching when “Careful With That Axe Eugene” was playing.

I watched 30 minutes or so of Rush In Rio while we were waiting for the deicing operation. Wow! Those people in Brazil needed their Rush fix. Watching a whole soccer stadium of people bouncing to Tom Sawyer was something else.

So, Geddy Lee has three industrial washing machines tumbling clothes behind him on stage and it's kind of weird. I'm hoping they explain it in the extras or something, but my theory is that he doesn't amplify his bass like he used to — he just connects it directly to an FX rack and that goess into the house sound. Meanwhile, Alex Lifeson still has quite a small town of guitar amps, FX, and other equipment on his side of the stage. If those washing machines or dryers or whatever were not there, Geddy's side of the stage would look remarkably bare. So, I'm guessing it's all about balance.

Thom's going to be very glad he gave these DVDs to me to watch because they've provided me with some inspiration and some imaginative ideas for the Sons Of Nothing shows.

Well, I hope I can get checked into my hotel before I gave to go teach my class. :-)

I had a great day today. Went up to Logan, worked on a NetGateway, had sushi, came home.

My buddy Chadd and I were planning on getting together last Monday (Martin Luther King day) and doing some kind of recreational stuff along with some hardware upgrades on Iodynamics servers in Logan. It didn't happen, unfortunately, because when I went to my supplier to purchase the hardware for the upgrades, the building was locked up.

I figured they were closed for the holiday and I cancelled the whole day. I found out later, the manager just slept in. Great.

So, Chadd and I rescheduled our fun for today. Because I'm leaving tomorrow and will be gone for six days, we decided it probably wouldn't be a good idea to do those hardware upgrades now. We'll do that when I get back.

So, instead of upgrading hardware, we went to Common Ground and got their NetGateway set up to operate over their new DSL connection instead of the old dial-on-demand configuration they've been using up until this point.

The NetGateway needed a couple new fans, so we took care of that while we were there.

After finishing at Common Ground, we had sushi at Tan Po Po. yum.

It was snowing in the evening, so I had to deal with that on my way home. It wasn't too bad. It's nice to see some falling snow again. We've been locked in a record-long temperature inversion in northern Utah since the first week of January. This little storm may shake us out of it.

Hmm. Speaking of the weather, I was hoping my trip to Iowa was going to put me in above-freezing temperatures for a change. Looking at weather.com, it looks like Des Moines is going to be colder than Salt Lake City! I'd better make sure I pack some gloves and a hat.

Now that I’ve had a few days to think about the Fozzolog policy on this Jay/Smoochy* and Jennie situation, I’ve decided to again post news related to the situation because Fozzolog readership includes so many interested parties.

However, I will try to keep my interjection of subjective content to a bare minimum (if at all).

Smoochy Hecticity

On Tuesday, Jay handed Jennie a handwritten note which said that his lawyer had advised him to kick Jennie out of the house. Jennie was on her way out to run some errands, but realized she had forgotten some things she was going to take to the post office. When she tried to go back in the house, Jay would not let her enter.

Jennie went to a friend’s house and called her attorney who advised her to call local law enforcement authorities. She did and the Sandy Police agreed to meet her at the house when she was going back there.

Officers escorted Jennie into the house later and explained to Jay that he could not legally keep Jennie out of her own house. Jay announced his plans to install an alarm system on the house.

Wednesday, Jay changed the locks on the house.

Today, Jennie was served with papers from Jay’s attorney indicating he is going to contest the divorce decree and Jennie is not to publish any untrue, disparaging comments about Jay on her website.

(Man, this is going to be hard to restrain myself from interjecting commentary.)

Looks like the FozzologHandler.pm got a little bug in it. In the function that cleans the HTML, the return statement had somehow gotten deleted. Easy to fix, but while it was broken, Eric's infamous comment was immortalized.

Ahhh. I installed gvim on the Windows 2000 partition on my laptop. It's nice to use.

You might wonder why I even have a Win2k partition on my laptop. Well, it comes down to this: Sony VAIO is a PITA to get PCMCIA working, so my wireless network card doesn't work in Linux.

But I've been spending some time making Win2k bearable while also trying to figure out how to get the PCMCIA stuff working right in Linux. I've installed Cygwin and XFree86 along with it. I got Putty, WinSCP, OpenOffice 1.1, and Mozilla Firebird installed so I can get all my work done without using “evil” software.

I also installed Micros^%@#$&*’s TweakUI tool so that I don't have to click on a window to bring it to focus. I can just move the mouse cursor over the window to focus on it. That's how I like it to work in Linux and it's a pain for me to switch back and forth otherwise.

Spam as entertainment

My buddy Chadd got some hilarious spam today and shared it with me. It seems to be the result of entepreneurial optimism, poor judgement, and poor english.

HEE HEE! I just crack up. “once she tries it no more old
you!” “no more laughing control yourself!”

More on this Iowa thing

I ordered a couple laptop batteries for this Iowa trip. They should be here tomorrow. Then I’ll have a mobile computing device instead of a portable AC-powered computing device. :-)

I’ll be teaching GuruLab’s “Enterprise System Administration” course. I’d say I’m very comfortable with 95% of the topics I’ll be covering, so I’ve got to brush up on the other 5% so I can give a good presentation.

Today we are featuring a scan of some of Maya’s latest artwork. I’ll let Maya describe this work.

It’s not a polar bear. It’s definitely not a walrus. It’s with the the letter P. It sounds like Pang. And then there’s a W sound next.

It’s a PENGUIN!

Maya’s penguins.

They’re both boys, see. They both have hats!

I’m off to Des Moines, Iowa this next weekend to teach another week-long class for our friends at GuruLabs.

Hmmm. I should probably get a working battery or two for my laptop before I leave.

For those who are wondering how the tile job came out. Here’s a picture. Looks great!

A new tile floor!

Also, Christine got a new hair-do by my brother’s girlfriend Kim.

Christine’s new hair-do

Some sad news. Marie Barton — our distant relative in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa and partial inspiration for the name of our daughter Lucy Marie — died Saturday night after experiencing a paralyzing stroke very recently. She was 100 years old.

Marie Barton in 2002

I had the fortune of visiting with Marie in 2002 when members of our family went to Mt. Pleasant to meet our relatives and do family history research. Marie had an amazingly sharp mind for someone close to a century old.

My parents went back to Mt. Pleasant this last year for Marie’s 100th birthday and got video of her playing the piano and singing and doing it well.

Today, I got e-mail from the wife of one of Marie’s grandsons who wanted to make sure I knew about the death. In that message, she wrote:

My husband, Bob, and I were able to spend some wonderful time alone with Grandma back in September and will always cherish those moments. She was ready to go "Home," and she made sure we knew it. Such a wonderful loving and strong woman she was. She will be greatly missed.

I was talking with my nephew Ben today about panoramic digital photos and mentioned that it’s fun to include a person multiple times in a photo by having them appear in each frame that is stiched into the resulting panorama.

I did this back in 2002 with my daughter Lucy and it’s a fun picture. It looks like we’ve got quadruplets or something.

1166x240 5015x1032

This morning, I took thee hacksaw and did thee deed to thee toilet.

Once the bolt was cut, it was easy to get the toilet up and into the bathtub (on top of a garbage bag to protect us from the wax ring mess, of course).

Now that the toilet is off the flange, we can see the flange is like the stack & seal type we saw yesterday. It looks like I need to take the screws out that secure the flange to the subfloor so I can get that rusty bolt out.

The toilet flange

Speaking of toilets, my brother and I are going to be putting tile down in the main bathroom here at our house tomorrow. To prepare for that, I went up to take the toilet out so we could put tile down underneath.

I turned off the supply valve for the toilet. No problems there.

I flushed the toilet to empty the tank. Great.

I popped the bolt covers off each side of the base of the toilet. Left side came off and I saw the nut and bolt. Right side came off and I saw... brown. It looked like a pile of bacon bits under there.

I looked at it more closely and it became apparent the bolt and nut had experienced a lot of rust- probably as a result of the water that came down through the ceiling.

I cleaned it off a little, but the rust had pretty much welded the nut and bolt together. I did manage to get a socket on the rusty nut after I got the clean nut on the left side off, but it just sheered off below the bowl base.

I don’t know what this bolt looks like. I don’t know if it’s is attached to the closet flange or if it screws into the wood of the subfloor.

Looking at the pictures of the various flanges available for purchase at the Home Depot website, it looks like now that I’ve got this one nut off, I might be able to jimmy the bolt out and the push the bowl base to the right.

A Stack & Seal flange

Anchor Flange

(Thank you Home Depot for those images!)

If what I have is the anchor flange, I may be in trouble.

I went downstairs to see if I could see where the other side of this bolt is. It looks like the drainpipe for the toilet penetrates the upstairs floor right above a major section of HVAC ductwork. I.e. I can’t see it or get to it. Oh joy.

I guess I can try to hacksaw this rusty bolt or something like that. I think I’m going to wait until my brother comes tomorrow and see what he says (after he stops cussing about it).

Ran across this over at engrish.com and thought I’d share.

Faster than a speeding toilet paper dispenser... It’s...

It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for months, but now it’s done.

I finally put together an events page for our family reunion trip to Ephraim Mountain in late July.

Recent events have made me think of an experience I had in my youth.

When I was about 10 or 11 years old, a man found me sprawled across the curb along a street in a neighborhood close to my house, crying. He could tell I had taken a painful fall. He asked if I was okay and offered me a ride home.

I went with him and he took me to my house where I explained to my mother what had happened. I told her I was at my friend Mike’s house and his older sister pushed me out the door and threw me down the driveway where I fell down on the pavement.

My mom was furious. Later, she called Mike’s parents to tell them what had happened. Talking to my friend’s parents, my mother learned a similar version of the events with some significant differences. The differences in the story infuriated her even more, but the new fury was directed at me.

She found out the reason Mike’s sister was so mean to me. As a prank, I had been running behind their house and had been shutting their power off using the main power switch that was located inside a box affixed to the side of their house. I had done this a of couple times, after which Mike or his sister went out and flipped the switch back on. Then, I went home and got a padlock, went back, turned off the power, locked the box shut, and ran and hid.

At some point, Mike’s sister caught up with me and demanded I take the padlock off. I don’t remember if I did or not, but in any case, she took her frustrations out on me by pushing me and throwing me down.

When my mother learned these new details, she felt angry and humiliated. She had called up Mike’s parents to discuss the unfair and downright mean treatment I had received at the hands of their daughter, and learned the treatment probably was not enough considering what I had done.

Not only that, but she also discovered I had withheld information — and essentially lied to her.

She would later say that was the first time she remembers ever catching me in a lie and it really hurt her.

Of course, I remember it too. I remember how ashamed I felt when I knew I had stolen my mothers compassion and sympathy when I didn’t deserve it. And, of course, once the truth came out, I felt a world of guilt for what I had done and what I had concealed.

I’ve just been thinking a lot about that experience the last couple of days.

Space!

President Bush is shooting for the stars.

It’s exciting news for me. It’s been depressing to watch NASA become just another bureaucracy going through the motions the last 10, 15 years. I’m hopeful the goals set by Bush actually result in... well, results.

I know some people feel we’ve got more serious issues right now than space exploration and there’s some truth to that. But, we’ve got to maintain our leadership in this area or else someone like China, India, or the EU will just race past us. Leadership in the space race is important.

Watch Out Harry O!

Sons Of Nothing are set to return to Park City on Friday, 30 January to play a full set of Floyd tribute heaven. I’m stoked and I hope to have some awesome imagery to show off that night.

Well, that’s all for now, it’s late.

So, Smoochy*’s upset and I’m pondering how this incident is going to affect the future of the Fozzolog. I’ve tried to be tactful and restrain myself in my postings. A lot of stuff is filtered before it “hits the Net,” so to speak. Jennie, on the other hand, hasn’t really shown much restraint in what she says in her journal. Actually, she probably is showing considerable restraint, but because of the intensity of her feelings right now, the resulting journal entries are still pretty... intense.

So, Smoochy*, if you’re reading this... I just want to say this: I'm sorry you feel this way, but while you visited mine and Jennie’s sites, did you find the new comment feature easy to use? Please answer using the prearranged responses below:

1. Not easy to use
2. Fairly easy to use
3. Exceptionally easy to use
4. I’m going to sue you! First ammendment be damned!

Jennie just called me to say that Smoochy* came home from work and told her he's planning to file lawsuits against me and her.

This should be interesting. I wonder if he should add the rest of his family as defendants too? :-)

Whoa. We have a new visitor!

jay.local.iboats.com visited this site (and other Fozzolog sites) today.

Just a note to mention that Jennie's journal (AKA JennieLog) now has comment capability.

Now, this wasn't just a copy and paste job. Obviously, there was some copying and pasting, but the Fozzolog and the FozzilinyMoo.org site in general uses the CGI::FastTemplate templating system. I generally don't like CGI::FastTemplate anymore, so when I created Jennie's site, I converted everything over to TemplateToolkit. Then, when I added the comment capability, I had to convert all that over too.

Well, it's done. I don't know about the rest of you, but I think it's about time. I've been wanting to voice my thoughts on a lot of stuff she's been writing about. Sometimes I get around to e-mailing her or talking to her in-person, but I'm sure I leave things out that came to mind as I was reading her entries.

Alright. Going to bed now. Have work to do in the morning.

I just got off the phone with Jennie. She sent a text message to my phone to let me and Christine know she was staying at her friend Laura's house tonight.

Smoochy* is going bezerk. He's going to lose everything. Jennie is going to file for divorce as soon as she can. She gave him a second chance because he admitted he had problems and expressed a willingness to fix those problems. Since then, however, he has rescinded on any willingness to fix those problems and, in fact, seems to have gone (back) into denial that he has any problems at all.

I'm sure Jennie will post details, but it sounds things got physical today. More of him disrespecting her wishes to be in a room alone; More of his delusional proclaimations that Jennie has no friends, can't communicate well with others, and that she's mean; Jennie shut the door after he left the bedroom, but he slammed his hand on the door to keep it from closing and got his fingers shut in the door. He now claims she is an abusive spouse.

What can be done?

I told Jennie she should have the locks changed at the house as soon as she files and put all his stuff in the garage. She says that could be illegal. I told her everyone in Smoochy*'s family would support her if she did. She's not sure I'm right.

Wow! We’re withstanding wacky, weird winter weather week within which we wait with waning wonder: “When will we waltz with warmth?”

The temperatures in the Salt Lake valley this week are between 10°(F) and 30°(F) (-12° - 0° (C)). Meanwhile, the temperatures at the mountain resorts east of Salt Lake City are 25 degrees warmer!

This seems to happen every winter. They call it a “temperature inversion” and bitter cold air gets trapped under a layer of warmer air and it just stays there. So, until we get another substantial storm through the area, we’re stuck in this shivering stuff.

Filing a motion

There’s this guy who’s filed a suit against Iodynamics in small claims court. We’ve looked over his affadavit and determined he filed it in the wrong court. So, rather than go to court, discover the case is thrown out, and have him file again in the right jurisdiction, we decided to file a motion for a change of venue.

This is the first time I’ve ever been involved in anything like this, so this is all new stuff to me. My partner Dave drafted up the document we needed to file. I printed it, signed it in the presence of a notary public, had it notorized, made a copy, sent the copy to the plantiff via certified mail, and delivered the original to the court. Whew.

So, I did all thing to at today. Fun.

If you’re wondering what the lawsuit is all about, I think Dave is planning on publishing everything about this lawsuit online in hopes it will help others who might encounter similar circumstances. Or, perhaps, he hopes it will provi decde people with endless hours of entertainment.

The hyper-condensed version of the story is that the individual who filed the claim was a client of ours in 2002. We had a contract with him that we would develop a website for him and deliver it within 14 days. Several months later, we still hadn’t finished the project because we had been waiting on content, specifications, and information from the client.

Meanwhile, the client became disgruntled and broke off contact with us without paying for work invoiced. We wrote off the bad debt.

In late 2003, this individual contacted us again saying he had found someone else to do his site for him and demanded we give him his domain name (which we registered as part of the original project) or he would take us to court. Our response to the individual was that we would be more than happy to help him if he would take care of the debt he owed.

The result is this lawsuit in which the client claims there was a breach of contract because we didn’t deliver within 14 days like the original contract stated we would.

As far as the domain name is concerned, it expired and some other party snatched it up.

It’s a hard (wood) world to live in

I was itching to do some work on the house tonight, so I installed a small corner piece of wood flooring in the kitchen and installed all the wood flooring in the kitchen pantry closet. That closet still had the house’s original carpet in it which has been replaced everywhere else in the house. So, it’s nice to get rid of the last of that dirty crap.

Christine didn’t like the round white handles on the kitchen cabinets. She felt they didn’t really fit in with the modern style of our stainless steel appliances. So, she got some cans of spray primer and stainless steel-colored spray paint to paint the white handles with.

I was a little relunctant to go along with this, but she tried it with one of them and it looked great. Tonight, she did the rest. It looks so good, I think we’re going to paint the front of the white fridge we got from my mom so it fits in with the stove and dishwasher!

I’m considering getting some lumber tomorrow to start framing in my permenant office in the basement. I think we’ve pretty much decided the office is going to go in the northeast corner of the basement, under the dining area.

On Buffy

I have managed to find the episodes from season 6 I was missing. They are:

• S6E14 - “Older And Far Away”
• S6E15 - “As You Were”
• S6E16 - “Hell’s Bells”

Unfortunately, the S6E14 MPEG file I’ve been able to find is really low-quality. It is about half the size of a normal VCD MPEG file (~200MiB instead of ~400MiB). I think I may hit the IRC channels in search of a regular-size VCD MPEG.

I also found a BitTorrent torrent of Buffy S6 DVDs in PAL format — presumably from Europe where they have already been released.

Could be cool.

On comments

Since I know a few people check out the Fozzologs from time to time to see what new boring thing I’m up to, I’d like to ask for feedback on the Fozzolog facility itself. Since a handful of other people use the software for their own online journals any features I create for my site will eventually make their way into others’ as well. So, what do you like/dislike about it? What kind of features would you want to see?

Christine thought it was dumb that you can’t make comments without signing up with a username and password. She says it will probably discourage comments. What do you think? Should it be blasted wide open so anyone can say anything? Should it allow “anonymous cowards”?

Time to slap up some pictures!

First off, we've got a picture from the New Years Eve party we went to at our neighbors Brad and Julienne's house. Then we have all the kids piled up on top of me on our couch in the living room. Thirdly, we have Lucy wearing some Bono-esque sunglasses one of the girls got for Christmas. She's got a cute smile plastered on her face. Finally, me and the girls shovelling our three-car-wide, three-car-deep driveway after the big wet storm a couple weeks ago.

Maya and Lucy on New Years Eve	Everyone on Dad!	Lucy wearing sunglasses
Shovelling snow after the first big storm

Jennie's Breakfast

Jennie has yesterday and today off from work, so we asked her to come over this morning for breakfast. We had a delicious feast that included hash browns, sausage, bacon, french toast, and orange juice. Yummy!

Christine and Jennie

Maya and Lucy

Kermit keeps a close watch on the girls

Last night, we all went over to Jennie's house and helped her pack away Christmas decorations and vacuum since she was feeling like she was falling behind on her housecleaning. I didn't think Smoochy* was there because we didn't see him the whole time. It turns out, he was in bed the whole time we were there. He hasn't been feeling well, apparently.

Judging by Jennie's latest jennielog, things aren't going super-well with her and Smoochy*. I know she had hoped his recent emotional breakdown in which he admitted he had some behavioral problems would be the beginning of positive change. But, it sounds like he's still trying to validate his old theories that she's crazy and other bullshit like that.

After told Jennie me on Monday she felt she had to give him another chance because his breakdown touched her heart, I told her I hoped it would work out, but that I really doubted it would. Smoochy*'s 33 years old and while he says he loves Jennie, his treatment of her indicates to me he doesn't love her enough to change.

Jennie and I also talked about Smoochy* not loving and/or respecting himself and how that's probably got to change before he can have a good relationship with other people, including her.

Knowing Jennie, she won't give up right away, but I know she has some concern he's going to file his own divorce paperwork if she doesn't start "being nice" (i.e. being intimate?!).

Tonight, it's yet-another blog about Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

I love this show. I got sucked into it and now I join thousands of people on this planet who can't seem to get enough of it.

I am very happy to say that I'm fortunate to have the company of my lovely wife Christine as I watch the DVDs and VCDs of the show. When I first started getting interested in BTVS, Christine wasn't interested at all. I would try to explain to her why I liked it, but she just thought it was corny and gory.

But now, she looks forward to putting the kids in bed so we can watch an episode together before she goes to bed.

Tonight, we watched "Tabula Rasa" which is the eighth episode from the sixth season. Incidentally, this is the next episode after the famous musical episode -- "Once More With Feeling" (which we watched again a couple days ago).

Tabula Rasa is an "amnesia episode," except that all the major characters lose their memory of who they are. Shortly after this occurs, however, they are visited by some bad guys as they head out together with the intent of going to a hospital for treatment of whatever has inflicted them with memory loss.

So, upon opening the door to go outside, they see these bad dudes. Without impaired memory, of course, Buffy would fight the bad guys and most of the rest of the gang would back her up. But in this case, they just panic. Hee hee! And here's a hilarious frame-grab from the episode.

The gang panics in 'Tabula Rasa'

So, we're slowly soaking up my VCD and SVCD copies of season 6 since we finished the season 5 DVDs I got at the first of December and the season 6 DVDs don't come out until May (although Angel season 3 comes out in February).

I have all of season 7, a lot of it on SVCD. I am missing a couple episodes from season 6- I think 14-17. I hope I can find them somewhere before we get to that point.

I had a strange dream last night. Of course, I don’t remember enough of it for it to make perfect sense to me, but I do remember that I was working on a musical production of some kind. I think the Sons Of Nothing may have been involved, but I’m a little fuzzy on that. I just remember running around behind the stage curtains, pulling ropes, and doing stuff like that.

Come to think of it, I have a lot of dreams about working backstage and in theater, in general. It was my biggest passion in junior high and high school. Stage crew was the reason I dropped out of school at Granger High: I wasn’t going to class enough. I just wanted to work in the auditorium, perfecting my lighting designs, reading lighting design books and magazines, etc.

So, anyway, this production I was working on in my dream, was having its share of technical problems. I kind of think I may have been doing stuff that wasn’t really in my domain- or showing up to do work without having been to rehearsals.

I don’t know what it means, but I do know that speculation of what exactly this means is the perfect type of thing for people to comment on using the new comments feature of the Fozzolog!

So far, 2004 has been good.

That’s kind of a funny thing to say on the second day of the year, isn’t it? I told Chadd tonight, “I haven’t seen any movies at all this year!” Hah!

I had a great day today. I got up early (well, early for me: before 9) and got a lot of work done. Then, around 2 or so, I went to the computer store and got some parts for a computer system a client in Logan needed us to build. I took all the stuff up to Logan, built the system, installed Windows on it (Ewwwwwww), fixed a few other things at their office, had dinner with Chadd, and came back home around 11:30 p.m.

I feel I had a good, productive day.

Tomorrow, I’m heading up to Ogden to help my brother-in-law Adam with a wiring project for one of his clients. I don’t think it will take too long. I should be back by early afternoon.

Hecticus Maximus Extremis

The saga of Smoochy* and Jennie is coming to a close. I don’t know how soon the close will come, but it’s coming. Jennie has decided to file for divorce. She may do this as soon as tomorrow, if she can get in to see her attorney.

Smoochy* had managed to coerce a handful of people into believing Jennie was substantially at fault for their marital problems. Namely, his parents and a friend of his. His parents, however, are learning more about how abusive Smoochy* has been and how he has misrepresented himself and Jennie.

I was thinking last night. Up until recently I had hoped, for Jennie’s sake, there was a possibility of a reconciliation for Smoochy* and Jennie. I was hopeful, especially when Smoochy* was not living in their house, they could work things out. Smoochy* was being kind and sensitive to Jennie and Jennie was being cautiously optimistic about the future.

After Smoochy* forced himself back into the house, however, he’d gone back to his old abusive ways and tried to find ways to make them look tame by comparison.

Now... I have no more hope. I guess that means I think the situation is hopeless.

I’ve also been thinking how unfortunate it is that the relationship I’ve had with Smoochy* has suffered so much because of this. Smoochy* refuses to blame himself for anything and I have been on the receiving end of his finger pointing on several occassions because I have supported Jennie.

But I don’t dislike Smoochy*. I hate how he treats his wife, the children of the world, and how he lies to, well, everyone, but I know he’s just a confused, immature guy who doesn’t know how to deal with the problems life has dealt him. To make it worse, however, he won’t face this truth. His pride won’t let him.

Many of us close to the situation have commented on how we feel bad for Smoochy*. I mentioned to Jennie’s friend Annie the other day, “I would hate to be Smoochy* on the day he wakes up and has that epiphany by which he realizes what he’s done.“

I hope, someday, after the smoke has cleared, the dust has blown over, and the radioactivity has returned to non-lethal levels for short-term human exposure, Smoochy* and I can again be family.

I wanted to send him e-mail saying this, but Christine said I should wait until the current crap that’s going on has passed.