Today's modern technology

OK, maybe this post is a few days late, but I still want to address it before too much time passes by. Last Friday I had a very unique opportunity to meet my cousin Trena over the internet.

My Aunt Bonita in Alaska had asked me if I would send a few of the recent pictures that I had uploaded of my grandmother and grandfather to her daughter Trena.



Recently I had scanned some old rare pictures that had been stuffed in a box somewhere before we added more life to them by scanning them and uploading them to the internet.





After e-mailing her a few of the pictures, I initiated an AOL Instant messenger conversation with her and then told my sister Kim that she was on AOL. Kim quickly installed AIM at home and before you know it the three of us were conversing over the internet.

It was nice to meet a family member that I have never met who lives some 4,000 miles away.

Note to family members in Alaska, I need more pictures.





P.S. I STILL Hate snow.

Chasm

Yesterday I said that I would post the solution for Chasm. It's a neat little game that is a little addictive. I'll do a walkthrough of it because it was one that took me a while to complete. WARNING: It is addictive.




1. Click on the steps so Joe keeps walking.
2. You will come to a open (broken) concrete pipe.

3. Get on the side of the pipe without water.
4. Walk down the pipe.
5. You will come to a door and rungs
6. Climb up the rungs
7. You will see a crank thing
8. Walk over to the crank thing and turn it

9. Leave the room in the upper right hand corner
10. You will end up in a tunnel, with a tunnel ahead and a pipe to your right
11. Go in the pipe
12. You will come out in a stream of water (open pipe again)
13. Go to the right/up
14. You will come to a pipe with more pouring out, a ladder, then steps
15. Go up the ladder
16. You will come to a pipe with more rungs
17. Go up the rungs
18. You will end up above the unbroken concrete pipe; there will be three cranks and a rope
19 .Turn all three cranks you come to by clicking them repeatedly
20. Click on the rope to knock it in the pipe

21. Climb down the rope (by clicking) you will end up above a trap door
22. Go through the trapdoor
23. Cross the rope bridge you come to
24. Go up through the next trapdoor on the other side of the bridge
25. Click on the bottom of the screen under Joe's feet
26. Climb the rungs on your left
27. Click until you get Joe to be on the opposite side of the rungs
28. The view should change so you see two water wheels and two cranks
29. Turn the second crank
30. Go back down the rungs, through the trapdoor, across the bridge, and up the other trap door
31. Climb the rope
32. Turn the cranks on the left/bottom
33. You should see water on the other side of the chasm
34. Cross the chasm (trapdoor, bridge,....)
35. Repeat steps 25-28
36. Close the first crank (right) and open the second (left)
37. You will see a little piece of anime of where the water is flowing. IF THIS DOESNT HAPPEN! Something is wrong
38. The big water wheel should start turning
39. Go back around basin (past the rungs)
40. Grab the moving pink belt (click repeatedly)
41. Start running down the steps till you get to a bag on a string
42. Cross the chasm in the bag by clicking into it and clicking on the open air
43. Jump out of the bag
44. Walk up/left on your screen
45. You will come to five flights of steps
46. Go down them
47. You will end up at the bottom of the dam with pipes and water
48. Wait till the water starts and go in pipe D as soon as it stops
49. Then go up to D4 left once (u will come up in an air hole) ASAP start going left go up to C5 keep going left until you cant anymore u will see a door (A5)
50. Go out the door
51. Climb the rungs on your left (keep your mouse above Joe)
52. You will come up on another door
53. Watch through the little window and u will see the water start
54. Go through the door as soon as it stops
55. Go up to B10
56. Go left once
57. Go 2 the top of the dam
58. Walk along the top till you come to a crank and a board
59. Turn the crank and Joe will surf down on the board
60. You now have both wheels turning!
61. Walk along the outside of the trough till u get to the 2 belts
62. Click on the 2nd 1 till Joe jumps up and grabs it
63. Walk along the steps
64. Another bag slide
65. When u get out of the bag slide it will go 2 the other side of the chasm that’s OK
66. Walk along the steps
67. You come to the broken concrete pipe
68. You should see water flowing through the tunnel behind it (if there isn’t, something is wrong)
69. Go down the pipe
68. Climb the rungs
69. Turn the crank
70. Enjoy the movie, you just beat it.


Ejoy yourself, it is a fun, yet addictive puzzle and even with the solution is kind of tricky. If you play the game all the way through, I know of one place where you will have a little bit of trouble (water pipes), when you screw up you get washed back to the bottom and hear this annoying bird laugh at you. After a few times you feel like choking him.

Finish the game and justice will be served.

Have fun.

Hapland, a neat little puzzle

What a time consuming puzzle and it took me a while to actually beat this. Hapland is a very challenging puzzle. I'll try to break down the solution for you to complete the puzzle.

1. Start by opening both windows and and turning the hanging arrow around.
2. Open the hatch and bring out the first stick guy by clicking the arrow pointing up.
3. Fire rock number one at the 'bridge', it wiil fall into place.
4. Fire the next rock at the bell. this will open the door on the left.
5. Next fire the 2 grenades at the bridge, you have to click on the bridge as the grenade reaches it to bat it into the air where it will explode.
6. Next, fire the blue card/key at the bridge, it will fall into the hole where stick guy 2 can use it.
7. After guy 2 opens the door click guy one back at the 'cannon', he will be loaded into the cannon.
8. Bring out stick guy 3 by pushing the UP arrow once more.
9. Click guy 3 at the cannon to fire guy 1 up at the bell, as he reaches the spear, click the spear to bend it slightly so the guy can land under the bell.
10. Once guy 1 is on the 'tower' click him to move the tower to the right. Click a few times to make it fall on the spear, launching the rock onto the landmine.
11. Next, click the door on the left and guy 4 makes his way to the door past where the landmine just blew up.
12. This is the tricky part: Right before guy 4 gets to the door, you need to click on guy 2 (below) to trigger him to begin walking.

This can be a little tricky and may not be as easy as it appears to be. There are three real tricky parts, the first one is #5. You have to time the grenades just right to pop them into the air. The second tricky part is firing the guy at the spear and having to bend the spear just in time. The final tricky part is #12, you want to get your timing right because there will be a chainsaw guy drop out of the box and attempts to kill guy 2.


I really liked this puzzle, but mu favorite internet puzzle has to be Chasm. This one kept me going for days before I got it figured out, but maybe I'll post the solution to this one another day.

Survivor Night

Well, once again it is Thursday night which means it is Survivor Night. This is week two of Survivor Palau.

This week both tribes managed to get a hold of their flints and managed to make fire. As everyone knows fire is an essential part of the game and it is a key element to their survival.

For the rewards challenge, surprisingly Angie Jakusz dominated the challenge despite being the last survivor picked last week and managed to win fishing gear for the Ulong tribe.

In the immunity challenge, teams were earlier in the day given in a tree mail the secret to Morse Code. Both teams had to have all their member swim out to a pontoon and start diving for objects. Eventually they had to dive down and retrieve a trunk and had to bring the trunk into shore and open it up and solve a Morse code puzzle to win immunity. The Koror tribe managed to win their second straight immunity sending the Ulong tribe to tribal council for the second consecutive week.

At Ulong's second tribal council it appeared to come down to a vote between Kimberly Mullen and Ashlee Ashby as to which member of Ulong would be going home this week. Going into tribal council it appeared it was going to be a 4-4 vote for Kim and Ashlee. After the voting, Ashlee was the second member of the Ulong tribe and fourth player of the game sent home.

AHHHHHHHH

What a bunch of suprises my eyes awoke to this morning. First of all, I fell asleep early last night and missed the WVU v Pitt basketball game. I figured we slipped by the 17th ranked Panthers not too long ago when we played them at home, now we had to travel to the Petersen Events Center and playthem on their home court and play them in front of their rowdy home fans. I thought we didn't stand much of a chance because truth be told Pittsburgh has a very talented basketball team. Much to my surprise we beat them 70-66 last night on their home floor. Way to go guys.Oh, check out the look on the face of the girl in the middle of the picture, this picture is truley worth a million words.



My second surprise was an unpleasant one this morning. I don't know if I have ever mentioned to anyone before, but I have this displeasure for this white stuff that tends to fall on the ground occasionally. Just in case I have never mentioned it I hate snow with a passion.

I blame this recent blanketing on a failure to travel to Punxsutawney and not poking a certain rats eyes out so he could not see his shadow. Someone simply tapping himon his shoulder and getting his attention on an objest towards the sun would have been sufficient, but no the rhodent had to turn around and cause this crap all over the ground this morning. Arrrrggghhhh.


Oh, one more pic thats a little "Blast from the Past"

Most Amazing Geography Software I've seen.

Thats a pretty strong statement when you consider a few things:

1. I am a Geographer
2. I work in the Field of GIS
3. I have already seen some pretty amazing things in the terms of GIS

For a mapping software to come out and completly blow my mind it would have to be something extremely special.

Tday, I have been given a chance to see that software and it comes from NASA of all places. It's called World Wind 1.2 and it has just totally captivated me today. Please be forewarned, it is a free software, but it also is about 170 MB in size to download. If you have a cable or DSL connection and at least 256 MB of RAM at a bare minimum and a 3D Graffics card. This software is VERY computer intensive, but well worth it if you have the minimum system requirements.

Tidbits

* Once again it's time for tidbits this morning.

* I was driving through town this morning and noticed that Mode Roman is STILL having a going out of buisness sale. Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't his going out of Buisness sale been going on for over a year that I can think of.

* On my way to work this morning I was flipping through channels. First I was listening to Aaron Scott and listening to him deliver news about a massive earth quake in Iran.

* Then I kicked over and started listening to Eric McGuire and started listening to people making up their own facts. One guy was talking about what Miss WV was Miss America in 1980. He tried to say it was Jaon Benoit Ramsey's mother. If you look at the History of Miss West Virginia you will notice we have NEVER had a winner. In 1977 however Pat Brown, who was Joan Benoit's mother was miss West Virginia.

* To top that off, the Movie trivia guys wife invented her own answers when she said that Jack Nicholson's first movie role was in Little Shop of Horrors, but according to IMDB.com his first screen appearance came two years prior in The Cry Baby Killer. Sheesh, I thought everyone knew this stuff.

* I did manage to order something that will always help me remember my time at WVU. I guess a guy who started and finished WVU the same time I did has done a DVD called Morgantown Mahem that I ordered. I know a couple guys who have seen it and love it. It was just a guy who video taped events from his time in college here.

* My sister Kim was telling me Sunday about a report on CNN where here in West Virginia on the Potomac River that they were finding fish eggs inside of male fish. So, being that I work at the Natural Resources Analysis Center I started to ask around to to the wildlife and fisheries guys, and their thoughts were similar to mine. The region has a high population of Poultry Houses. This is where they breed a lot of chickens. Our theory is that they have been ingested with a growth hormone that could potentially leave the chicken in their bile. With so many chickens in the area, watershed contamination from the excess of chicken manure is something that I myself have wondered about for years. My friend Ginger did a report on the number of poultry houses in the area. We had actually discussed me following up on her reseacrh the next year, but I got on a different project. Now I kind of wish I had followed up on it. Anyways, I did a quick little map of the area and its watersheds. The Potomac runs along the northern Bortder of West Virginia and the green areas are poultry houses in either the Northy Branch Potomac, South Branch Potomac or Cacapon watersheds that all drain into the potomac.



* I just took a look at this novel that I have written and thought maybe I should have made a story out of a few items rather than doing a tidbits section.

* Kim brought me a few nice presents yesterday, she's into canning and brought me a canned Deer Meat, a Canned stuffed Peppers, a Canned Home msde Salsa and a Canned zucchini cake. I haven't eaten any of them yet, but it is very tempting.

* I guess you can call this long tidbits post as a Mission Impossible completed.



* P.S. I Still Hate Snow

Nice Long Weekend

Rarely do I ever take time off of work, this past Friday I went to see Randy graduate and was able to enjoy a rare extended weekend for myself.

Friday after Randy's graduation we all went to the Country Inn to get a chance to sit and talk to Randy for a while and enjoy some of Nick's fantastic Cheeseburgers. (Eat one of these and there will be no wonder why they are selling so much food.)

Saturday, on a little advice from a message board, I went and purchased the DVD SAW. It was a kind of Freddie Kruger Meets Jason meets Hannibal Lecter type of movie. I'm not really into the horror flicks, but this is one you have to watch all the way through before you can appreciate the movie. It has a surprise ending that I never expected, so in respect for anyone who should happen to want to watch it I wont ruin it for them.

Sunday was a typical Sunday, went grocery shopping at Super Wal-Mart, did Laundry and started to take a Sunday afternoon nap until Nick called me and wanted me to go to the bar and sit there while Amy bartended. Nick and Terri went to a special promo kickoff put on by Budweiser to introduce bar owners to their two knew Budweiser brands of beers that they are stating to market.

It's currently 48 Degrees here in Morgantown and there is no snow!!!! Have I ever mentioned before I hate snow?

Talk about a long process

Wow, this past September I went to a career day at WVU. I was walking around looking for a specific table that I had been told had a GIS position open. Of course walking around the WVU Coliseum there were many tables set up and I dropped off an occasional Resume or two.

One of the places that I actually stopped to talk to was an Engineering firm called Dewberry out of Fairfax Virginia. I stopped and talked to them and asked if they did GIS. Probably one of the wisest questions I've ever asked.

After a brief conversation I walked away and never gave it a second thought. Pan ahead three months and November and they call me requesting to set up an interview sometime around Thanksgiving. I did a little research on the company and was finding some very strong positives about the company. They definitely had my interest.

Didn't hear from them again until just before Christmas, we talked about going down after the first of the year for an interview and that time came and passed. No more contact.

This morning, I get an e-mail from them wanting me to pick one of four dates in Late March or Early April to go down to tour the facility and conduct an interview.

Keep your fingers crossed, this is a long slow process, but it looks positive.

Congratulations Randy

My nephew Randy graduated from his first phase of training today at the Mountaineer Challenge Acadamy. Just a few short weeks so far and he seems much more mature and in control. Thye really put him to the physical test in the first few weeks. He proudly demonstrated today that he does sixty-five one-finger pushups on a daily basis.

He seemed very happy to be able to come home today and really wanted to see his neice. I think those two have one heck of a bond so far.

Survivor Palau Premiere

Yep, it's that time again, that time when Jeff Probst takes a number potential Millionaires and drops them off at some exotic location. This starts the game of survivor. Tonight, twenty cast aways were dropped off of the Island of Palau for the start of the game.

They were dropped off onto the island and the first male and first female who made it to shore were given immunity. It seemed to be a different game to start, then Jeff appears and has the two players who won immunity pick their teams. A man had to select a woman and a woman had to select a man and alternated throughout the picks. Eighteen of the twenty were picked. Wanda was the most annoying survivor on the boat with her singing and was one of the two not picked. I think it was Jonathan was the other.

Once teams were set, they learned that they will be two teams that all lived on the same beach as one group....or so we thought.

Right afterwards they had an immunity challenge. The winning team had a choice, they could remain on the beach that they had helped build, or they could start over completely new on another beach with the map Jeff gave them. They chose to go and find the new beach and abandon the camp they had set up.

It wasn't a smart move, they left everything they had behind and managed to get lost on a large series of islands that to be honest with you had some breath taking views.

At Tribal council Jolanda was the third person sent home today.


Looks like it could shape up to be an interesting game.

Tidbits

* I was going to do a normal post today, but some of the things I have running through my mind are so unrelated that I feel it's probably best to just do a simple tidbits.

* Survivor Palau starts tomorrow night. If you have ever read this BLOG you can easily come to two conclusions about me.

1. I Hate Snow
2. I Love Survivor

* Randy is graduating his first Phase of Mountaineer Challenge academy this Friday and will be able to come home for the first time since he started the program. I'll be going to show support and get a few pictures.

* Jean fought a traffic ticket that she got this fall this week. A state Cop issued her a "Failure to Obey" ticket this past fall when she made a left onto the mileground after a WVU football game. The State Trooper wasn't from Morgantown and I suggested she fight it and she decided to have her day in court. This past Monday was her court date and surprisingly the State Cop was there and had council with him. She called me Monday night feeling the prosecutor got the best of her and she would lose and be found guilty and have to pay the ticket. Let's just say Jean was a very good people person and caring Nurse prior to her stroke. Patients seem to remember that, magistrates too. She won her case.

* On a side note, I was over at my mothers house scanning pictures Monday and I ran across the last album my Aunt Lottie had recorded prior to her death. My mom talked about one song that she did that have everyone in the studio in tears by the time she had finished. I ripped the song and converted it to mp3 and have hosted it. It Is No Secret is the name of the song. During Lottie's life she and her husband Junior with their children as a gospel group known as The Gospel Singing Koon Family.

* I realized this morning on my walk to work, that it has been years since I have flown a kite. It's something simple in life that you always seem to remember. I've come up with a few of lifes simple things I would like to do this year.

1. Fly a Kite.
   
2. Take lots of pictures (like thats a surprise)
3. Reunite family members and go see some other family members that I haven't seen in literaly decades.
   
4. Get a group of people together and rent some bikes and bike rails to trails as a group for a few hours. What would really be nice is if we could start in Masontown, WV and bike to Morgantown. (It's all downhill)

It's not inconceivable that these things can happen.

* I would also like to find some addtional resources for old family pictures that I can scan and host. I know they are out there, it's just a matter of rounding them up and scanning them. Moving this family into the 21st century is a lot of work, but it's enjoyable.

I got a few old pictures scanned.

The past few weeks I have wanted to go through my sister Terri's big tub of pictures so I could pick a few out to scan for my website. Mom went out to Terri's yesterday and said she had Terri's pictures and would have them at her home and to stop by after work.

We managed to go through literally thousands of pictures, and although I would have loved to have scanned each and every one of them, I have to be realistic and know this is a near impossible task.

We did managed to sort through a few of them, I think there was about seventy that I had set aside that I definately wanted to scan. I managed to get a start on scanning last night and actually managed to get fifty pictures, scanned and uploaded to my sitem under the Old Family album. Mom is going back through today and I'm sure she will be adding more pictures to the scan list, so there are many more that will be scanned and added over the next few days.

Here's a small sample of a few of the first ones we have scanned.

Short weekend

Wow, talk about a short one day weekend, sheesh. After I got off of work Saturday I went over to my mothers house and helped her get her new Photo Album up and running. She's off to a good start learning how to upload files to the server. However yesterday she did make a mistake by deleting her album rather than just one picture. She's back up and running and will be continuing to add photos to the album.

My sister Kim changed her thinking on how to do a website and is actually doing her main page in PHP as opposed to a static HTML. The PHP Site is off to it's second good start. She seemed to have accidentally wiped out her site yesterday, but not to fear she's been busting her behind getting everything back up and running. Once she has her site done, I think I'll back up a copy of everything on my computer for her in case this accidentally happens again. I should also back my own site up here pretty soon.

I'm trying not to overwhelm Kim with new information, maybe once she gets everything how she likes it I'll show her how to edit the PHP on her page so she can customize it a little more.

I have to get her a copy of Studio MX. It has a whole mess of new we design tools that she would love, and it contains Dreamweaver which will open many new doors to her in the way of HTML design.

On a side note, I guess Mom is going to get Terri's big box of pictures off of her today so we can look through them for new pictures to scan. I'm sure there will be many new pictures that will be coming to our sites soon. I know Kim said she had thousands of pictures, so there may be a lot of new pictures added to the albums pretty soon.

Stay tuned, it could be interesting.

Working Saturdays

What in the heck was I thinking about when I decided to come in and work this morning. Granted I'm the only one within 300 miloes of the building and can actually get some uninterupted work done, but why am I here?!?!?!?!?

Actually I'm working today and I'm going to take off this coming Friday so I can manage to go to Randy's Phase I Graduation from the Mountaineer Challenge Acadamy. I'm planning on going and taking a few pictures of him at his graduation. Maybe even get a picture or two of him in his uniform for everyone to enjoy.

I'm going to try to get with my sister Terri this Monday and go through her assortment of old family pictures so I can scan them. My sister Kim has managed to catch up to me and pass me with the total number of pictures that she is hosting and I can't let some rookie beat me. I need to get as many pictures scanned as I can because I'm sure she's goin got be adding additional pictures real soon. I want to try to keep my site as unique as possible for the pictures and hold down on the redundancy of pictures between our two sites. I want the unique ones she doesn't have.

A different operating system

Thanks to a co-worker named Jesse, I got a little bit of a computer education yesterday. I learned how to extract an .iso file and how to be able to burn it to a bootable CD. I had always used the burning software that came with my Iomega CD burner. I quickly learned that it is nothing short of some bare minimum burning software. I now have NERO and have seen that my capabilities have been extremely limited first hand. Talk about some powerful burning software, I give Nero a double thumbs up for software to have on your computer if you have a CD burner.

Anyways, my OS experience has been limited to Windows Operating systems and Unix for about a year at work. Jesse is one yet another programmer that I know that just doesn't like Microsoft products. At work and at home he has his computer set up to dual boot either Windows or Linux.

I kind of had a curiosity of learning about Linux, and he proceeded to tell me that it can be booted from a CD using Knoppix. I actually made a bootable knoppix CD yesterday and came home and ran Linux on my computer for the evening. I had a lot of fun playing with it and seen some great advantages that it offers. For example if your windows system would crash, you could put in knoppix and retrieve any important files before you would be forced to do a system recovery.

I'm exploring the possiblity of purchasing a third hard drive and exclusively running Linux as my OS for that drive to give me the full capabilities of the system. Until then, I think I'm going to enjoy playing with knoppix.

Randy's Graduation

I talked to Val and Terri yesterday and I guess Randy's 1st Phase graduation from the Mountaineer ChalleNGe acadamy will be Friday, February 18, 2005 @ 1:00. After graduation he will be able to take his first cadet leave and return home for a few days.

I'm sure the first month has been very challenging to him both physically and mentally. I can say that I for one am very proud of him and what he has accomplished. When he makes it through this 22 week program he will be able to look back at it and say that he accomplished it.

Reminder on Randy

This is his contact information, hopefully if I keep it pretty active he'll be getting a few e-mails. I'm sure he would love an encouraging word from everyone every now and then. I sent him one this morning.


wvchallenge@wvchallenge.org
Subject: Cadet Hamrick

Has to be mailed by 3:00 for him to receive it that day. Remember he can't respond, so I'm sure encouraging words from everryone will be very appreciated.

Tidbits

* I went to the Country Inn Sunday Night to watch the Super Bowl. I had a great time, as usual Terri and Nick know how to entertain people.

* Nick DID NOT have a TV set up in the restroom. If anyone knows Nick, you gotta know that when he hosted a Super Bowl Party at home, he always had a TV in the bathroom.



* Amazingly I took my camera with me to the Country Inn, but didn't take a single picture.

* Learned how to hack passwords on most secure documents yesterday. A friend of mine put a password on a word document and forgot her password. I guess I too got a little education. We hacked it and found her password that she forgot.

* I didn't realize that I had my private album set to display publically. Nott hat it really had anything in there, but it's where I store stuff like the above picture that really has no use to be in an album, but I may want to refer to it.

* I've been up sice 2:00 A.M. I woke up and was wide awake and couldn't manage to get back to sleep.

* Amy was working as the bartender Sunday night, I do have to say she was doing a great job.

* Nick told me that one of his customers told him he has sold more food in two months than the previous owner sold in an entire year. He said he goes through 80 pounds of Wings a week alone.

* I saw Tyler Sunday night for the first time since her accident. She's looking good but they just realized she beoke her shoulder blade also. I broke mine a few years ago and I will say it was one of the most painful things I've went through.

* Terri also seems to have healed up quite nicely from her little accident. Jeanette Perry styled her hair and you can't even notice she lost a good bit of it.

* Speaking of Jeanette, she's getting married this May. Her and her Fiancee came to the Super Bowl party. It was nice to see her and talk to her a little. She said Terri and Nick are going to cater the wedding, and I told her she knew where to find the cooks.



* I can't believe I didn't take any pictures at the Super Bowl party.

* It was actually 60 Degrees here in Morgantown yesterday. Did I ever mention I hate snow?

* I think everyone enjoyed seeing Kim's picture album, I was going to tell Terri about it but I guess I'm slow on news because she had already seen it.

* I wonder what new and remarkable things I can learn today?

* I just realized it's Fat Tuesday!!!!!! Mardi Gras!!!!!! Women running around flashing their boobs for beads. Woo Hoo!! I need flashed today.

Hall Family Store

A couple years ago I found a site on the internet that let you set up a store and sell items. They had 10 or 12 customizable items that you could add pictures to and market a product to sell.

I started the Hall Family Store just screwing around with one or two products. Today I see they offer 68 products so I took away all the other stuff that I was playing around with and uploaded an image or two and started custmizing products.

As you can see I generically took the latest picture of all my siblings and generically added it to everything. This gives the viewer a chance to look at all the products with just a picture on them.

I'm opening the store up, but I have set all prices to the minimum price (cost) that I am allowed. This means I'm making $0.00 on any item if you decide to purchase anything.

If anyone has a picture that they want merchandise on thats hosted by me or my sister Kim I will gladly upload the picture to the site and add it to any product or products that you may want to purchase.

Between the two of us we have over 1,000 pics to choose from and more to come with every passing event. I thought it was just a nice opportunity in case anyone would like to buy a nice little customizable keepsake. I may actually purchase something myself.

If anyone wants a customized product, just let me know and I will gladly oblige you and switch the site around for you.

Added a new sidebar item

Recently reading Daniel's, Kamey's and Kim's BLOG they had all tied in video files to their sidebar of their BLOG's. I wanted to add something there, and was actually thinking about embedding one of my own Windows Media files to the sidebar.

With Kim moving her site and adding a photoalbum I decided to tie our picture sites into the sidebar. Between her and I there are currently over 1,000 various pictures being hosted at one site or the other. I'm sure that number will always continue to grow and it's something I hope everyone enjoys stopping by and seeing what has been recently added. I also love the feature where you can leave comments, but a word to the wise, we both have complete administrative control over both of our site and it's content. In other words, place nice so everyone can enjoy their visits. Doing these sites are tricky, a financial obligation and time consuming. They are done so everyone can share in our memories and reflect back on days gone by.

Maybe it's just me, but I feel that sites like this give a new meaning and a new life to once old and static pictures shoved in a box in a closet and forgotten about. They are all in digital format which means you can easily transfer the median and save them to a disk and go somewhere and have prints made quite easily.

I also added Mark Devault's, who is running a different program to display his pictures. Mark is a guy I've known for year and we just found out last summer with Lottie's passing that we were actually cousins. He is also the king of the MySQL database.

Hopefully as time passes I'll be able to add additional albums from other family members and friends.

I thought it was a nice subtle, but yet a very useful sidebar item to add.

Mission Not Accomplished

Thats damn rat saw his shadow. Six more weeks of winter.

Did I ever mention I hate snow.

Smashing the ice

The past couple of days I was talking to my sister Kim through MSN and we started talking about websites and such. What our server offered and pricing plans. She was with Yahoo and from a developers standpoint, I thought it was very user unfriendly, complicated and over priced. She really liked the picture program that I run on my site and I tried to install it on Yahoo's server and it turned out to be more of a headache than it was worth.

I gave her a chance to see the internal part of my website and she installed Coppermine and got it up and running rather easily. I think she really likes what my image viewing software offers. Yesterday she switched servers and will soon begin the process of pointing the DNS server to the new host (Technical mumbo jumbo).

Anyways, last night I actually went up to their house to assist her in setting up her Front Page software to FTP her site up to the new server (more mumbo jumbo).

It was nice to visit and see everyone, especially Brittany. She was proud as heck that she made the honor roll again and I think she's going to manage to do somethign I never could and that's obtain a 4.0. I came close 3 times and one was REALLY close, but I never did accomplish it. I have a feeling she will.

Anyways, she's using a new host and I'm sure her site will be going through some very noticable changes soon. She has her Picture Viewer all set up and ready to go. She's already done the hard part and now just needs to start uploading pictures and creating albums. She's the creative one, so I'm sure hers will be more organized than mine.

Early Planning

I don't know if any of you know this, bedause I don't think that I have ever mentioned it. I HATE SNOW!!!! Snow is usually associated with winter and so on.

I have a plan. Tomorrow is Ground Hog's day. If the pesky little rat sees his shadow we are going to have six more weeks of this horrible season they call winter and possibly even more snow. Arrrgghhh. (Side note to self, start looking for Jobs in Aruba) However if this lovable adorable creature does not see his shadow, then spring is right around the corner.

Here is the plan being this is February 1st. I need a brave volunteer to do "Operation Kill the Rat".



There has been a plan devised in which there are 8 Choice ways to eliminate the pesky little rhodent.

If all goes according to plan and someone can get to Punxsutawney PA before tomorrow and kill the rat, we may be able to avoid getting any more snow. Just start looking for a Rat named Phil when you get there.



Either terminate Phil with extreme prejudice or just simply poke his eyes out. Either way, just make sure that tomorrow when he has his day in the sun, there is no possible way that this rat can see his shadow.

If we get to him early enough, we can prevent anymore of this ugly snow fall and start getting to the season where girls run around wearing a lot less clothing.



Did I ever mention I hate snow?