Over the Hump

Is it me, or has this week gone by pretty quick so far? Maybe it's because I have been busy doing a lot of editing at work and haven't noticed the time has passed.

I received a nice series of e-mails yesterday, my softball team is going to have their own Christmas Party on December 9. That is going to be pretty nice becasue for the most part I haven't seen the guys for a few months and we are somewhere around the halfway point between the end of last seaosn to the start of a new season.

I have contemplated retiring the last few years, but it still runs through my veins and I won;t be retiring this season. I've actually dropped a few pounds and am ready for the season to resume again. I am starting to suffer a little from Seasonal Affective Disorder(SAD) and am ready for the days to get longer rather than shorter and spending time with the guys at the park.

It's not even Christmas yet and I'm ready to hit the field again, don't think I've had those thoughts in a few years.

Days are still getting shorter and it's a depressing time of the year. I'm ready for the smell of softball and girls to be walking around in tight little shorts.

Have a good mid-week.

Large MSN Chat

Last night was a special night. I was able to pull in a few family members and have a very nice MSN Messenger Chat. People who were involved:

Me Obviously.
Linda My Cousin from Alaska who came into visit about 12 years ago or so with her mom.
Bonita My Aunt in Alaska, and Linda's mom.
Mom I got her hooked up with MSN yesterday and an account to log in with that she can remember.
Kim My sister across town.
Brittany My niece who was a little too busy doing homework, but came in to say hello.

Count them, that is six people all in one MSN messenger chat.

I think the world just got a little smaller. Kim mentioned about hooking everyone up with Skype and having one big confusing telephone conversation at no charge.

Happy Birthday Val

Today is November 26, 2006 and I would like to wish a very Happy Birthday to my Neice Valarie. It seems like only yesterday Jane and I went to a Morgantown High School Football game while not knowing that my sister Terri was giving birth to her first born child Valarie Jo.

Times have passed and years have gone by and that little girl has grown up into a very beautiful young woman with two great kids, a husband and a couple puppy dogs.

I had a chance to talk to Val earlier this morning on MSN, she had been celebrating her birthday and I had a little surprise available for her. Bonita is back on the internet and her daughter Linda has been added to my MSN Messenger and we had a chance to chat for a few minutes last night.

Happy Birthday Val.

My Thanksgiving

Yesterday was a pretty good Thanksgiving overall. I started the day out with an early dinner at Val's, her first one she has done, and I have to say she can cook for this fat man anytime. She did a great job with the food, I was very pleasantly surprised everything was top notch.

After leaving Val's, I got a phone call from Moke (see previous post) and got a nice chance to talk to him for a while. He had a few hours off yesterday and wanted to make the most of them.

After leaving Val's, I stopped at home to take a little rest before heading out to Kim's to see Kim, Brittany, Robert and of course to spend a little time with my buddy Roki. I got a chance to try out their new dart board and fell in love with it. It was the best dart board I think I have ever played on. I also had a nice little time teaching them how to play Crickett.

It was a very good day for me over all. Of course I did manaage to take my camera with me and have already placed the images on my new image site in an album called Thanksgiving 2006 for everyone to be able to see and share. As you can tell I am starting to populate the new picture site. It may initially look the same but it's broken down a little more specifically, the viewer has the option of setting their own theme and the pictures can be sent to shutterfly to purchase prints if you wanted to. I have no association with shutterfly, it is only a quick and easy option for anyone who would want to order any prints.

There was a nice little surprise yesterday. Terri tried calling me a little after 6:00 when I was already at Kim's (no signal for my phone) to wish Kim a Happy Thanksgiving. She didn't have Kim's phone number so she tried calling my phone. Slowly but surely.

Hope you don't get trampled on today shopping.

Pleasant surprise

I had just left Val's and her Thanksgiving Dinner and I got a phone call from Moke. He seems to be having a lot of fun, I think he likes the military, they are teaching him masonry and carpentry, but I think he likes it once its built and they get to "blow the shit up".

He told me about a link to some of his Training Pictures that I thought I would share with everyone. There is also a general link to his companies site and it has their daily training schedule.

He will be there for eight more days and then he will be off to Mississippi for his AIT training that will carry him through January. He will have the opportunity to come home for a breif break over Christmas, and I know I am really wanting to see him.

His address for the next few days is:

E-1 McClain, George
A CO 1/48 IN, 3rd Plt
Unit 13
Ft. Leonard Wood, Mo
65473


However, he will be moving on in his training soon.

Happy Thanksgiving

In 1621 the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast which is now known as the first Thanksgiving. While cooking methods and table etiquette have changed as the holiday has evolved, the meal is still consumed today with the same spirit of celebration and overindulgence.

385 Later we are still celebrating this yearly ceremonial feast that was started by the colonists and the Indians. It has changed through the years, other traditions have started and have become common place in association with Thanksgiving. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade being one of them.

I can remember as a kid sitting with my grandparents and watching this parade, waiting ever so anxiously to catch a glimpse of Santa Claus at the end of the parade. You patiently sat and watched the floats, the balloons and all the marching bands, just to get a glimpse of Jolly Old Saint Nick. This is the ceremonial holiday season that also includes Christmas and concludes with new Years Day.

However you spend it, have a safe and happy holiday.

500

This, is a ceremonial post. It is one that I could have let go unnoticed, but I felt it deserved it's own little post. What is so special about this post? This is post number 500 for this BLOG. This is the 500th time that I have decided to make an entry either to spread the word, tell a joke, give out information, do a tidbits, post pictures or just do anything in general to post.

My first post was on September 11, 2004 and I have been posting ever since. I have managed to stay true to my original purpose and keep this BLOG active and retain its integrity and keep it all together. I've upgraded the account, but managed to maintain all of the posts in the same version of George's Journal.

My BLOG has established a little bit of a history and a time line over the past twenty-six months. It's seen me coming to a conclusion of a second complete calendar year in a little over a month. It has seen two elections, A job change, peoples dreams and miseries in the family. It's been a source of information and a place to meet new people.

All because I have kept it active, I now have something to reflect upon and remember things by. I can go to a month and reflect what was happening at that time. I'm thankful to my reader base and the fact that I do have one. It's special because people actually give me feedback whether in person, on my blog or in some forum that I spend a lot of time in.

So, thank you for reading my BLOG and allowing me to share part of my life with you and here is to the next 500 Blog posts.

Start of a four day weekend.

The workweek for me is now almost officially over (may log on and do a half hours work tomorrow) and I am at the start of a nice four day weekend.

No big plans yet, may make a few stops tomorrow to try to get my share of tryptophan on Turkey day. That is the chemical in Turkey that makes makes you tired and want to sleep.

Work has been a little hectic over the past couple weeks, lots of data coming my way, and up until about lunch time today it has been pretty hectic. So, I am actually looking forward to a nice well earned break.

Friday is Black Friday, the start of the Christmas Shopping season and an excessive amount of traffic. However here in Morgantown the students are off for the week for Thanksgiving Break, so that takes away a little bit of the traffic.




We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.--e. e. cummings

The Most missed day of work

Today in West Virginia is the single most missed day of work in the state. Today is the first day that hunters can actually shoot a deer with a rifle. Bow season has been open about a month, but the ability to use a rifle just adds to the amount of hunters out in the woods today.

Gun season in West Virginia traditionally runs for two weeks starting on the Monday prior to Thanksgiving. Many people schedule their vacations around this week so that they can get out in the woods. However, everyone thinks like that and most hunters take the first day of the season off so that they can get out in the woods.

I was telling Kim last night that there was a year when I worked at Sterling Faucet and my department consisted of twenty-seven employees. On year on this day there were three of us in our department working that day. I was one, the other two were two brothers who lived in Pennsylvania whose season doesn't start till next Monday.

I wish all hunters a very safe and productive season, kill them in the woods so I don't run them over with my car. That sounds mean, but hunters reduce the deer population so many of them do not starve to death over the winter.

I need to get with it.

I said a couple weeks ago that I would start transferring pictures over to the new host , but I am still dragging my feet on this issue. Been real busy at work lately so there really hasn't been a lot of down time that would allow me to sort and organize.

I think today I am going to start organizing the pictures and getting them ready to FTP up to the new site. I've added some nice features, but who cares if there isn't any pictures up there to be seen.

I need to stop procrastinating and just get this done, I think I have the skeleton of the site up as far as formatting, it's just a matter of adding content.

Pat White Mocking the Panther Growl

99th Back Yard Brawl

Tonight at 7:30 on ESPN, West Virginia and Pitt will be playing football for the ninety-ninth time in the Backyard Brawl. This has always been a big game for WVU and we have always considered Pitt the team that we hate the most, even though there is a Palko playing QB for Pitt.

WVU and Pitt was the first college football game ever broadcast over the airwaves by KDKA out of Pittsburgh.

Last Season WVU just flat out embarrassed our brother from the north when Pat White rushed for 220 Yards and Steve Slaton added an additional 179 yards in shredding the pathetic Pitt defense last season 45-13.

There is a cute little story for all of you to enjoy about the Evil Pitt Empire, it has been around a few years. Enjoy the read and enjoy the game tonight.

Be on the lookout

Be on the lookout this holiday season for Tickle Me Elmo TMX. It should be the hot item for Christmas this season and it will be the toy to watch. Val is trying to find one for Erica, who just adores Elmo, for Christmas this year. It has not been an easy find for anyone unless you want to pay about four times its retail price on Amazon.

This is going to be a tough find this holiday season, I check at Super Wal-Mart every time I visit, but to no avail. My guess is that they will set the next lot of them out on Black Friday (November 24th this year).

The Christmas Season is quickly approaching, wasn't it just summer?




What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future. It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal, and that every path may lead to peace.--Agnes M. Pharo

Monday

It's Monday and the start of yet another work week. Today is the typical day for me lately, solve the problems that even the developers of the software are having problems solving, completely bog down all of a $30,000 computers resources and be waiting with other processes for it to run and this was by the time I ate breakfast this morning.

Kim returned to work today after a short leave of absence. She has been off the past two and a half weeks with complications from her surgery last year. She finally made it back to the office today.

I spoke with Val over the weekend and she said she has sent a hello e-mail to Kamey, Daniel's Wife, and they have had a little correspondence between the two of them in the past week or so.

I'm still feeling a little under the weather, this thing seems to keep wanting to hang on and hang on. I really don't feel so bad that I can't do anything, but it's a flu bug that I can't really seem to shake.

Work is either fun or drudgery. It depends on your attitude. I like fun.--Colleen C. Barrett

New Phone and upgraded service.

I have been with CellOne for about a year and a half now and if you have ever talked to me on the phone you would have known my phone kinda, well sucked. I've had numerous dropped calls no matter where I was at and had trouble picking up a signal sometimes standing right beside Gary who also had Cell One.

My Nephew Randy had a Motorola Razor and had nothing but trouble with it. I thought it was about time to upgrade my service and my phone. I decided to try the Sony Ericsson W300i as my new phone.

Hopefully it will get better reception and will stop dropping as many calls as I had been. I was talking to Kim and she decided to play a joke on me while I was still at the Mall. She hung up on me making it seem like a dropped call. I almost turned around and took the phone back. I'll get her back for that one.

The new phone offers all kinds of new features including an MP3 player and it also, get this, a radio tuner that has great sound and great reception.

Needless to say I am pretty happy with it so far. I think it is the same phone Gary got, and it is a pretty bad ass phone.

Been a little under the weather

I think I have caught a bit of the flu bug this past week. Sore throat nasal congestion and not really feeling all that well.

Took a trip to the Pittsburgh Airport this morning to pick up Farida who flew home from Toronto. Abdul's mother had passed away and she traveled up to Toronto for the funeral and returned today.

Other than that it has been a pretty uneventful week for me so far. I started to add some new material to shitzngiggles, but like I said I have been under the weather and really haven't spent a lot of time on the internet this week.

Hopefully this weekend I will start uploading pictures to the new picture site and will upload some more material to ShitzNGiggles. I'm still wanting to play around with the design a little more, not sure if I have found the right color scheme yet so I will probably play around with it a little bit more. I have a ghost of it up on my other server in a protected directory to play around with. I may end up resetting it to change the formatting so it can be more search engine friendly.

We are already at Thursday night for the week, so we are one day away from yet another weekend. I honestly live a boring life because I have nothing planned for this weekend. I may go to Morgantown High's playoff game tomorrow night, but I'll wait and see how I feel first.

I miss summer.

Election Day

Today is election day around the country. I am a very active and registered voter who has already made his trip to the polls this morning. Actually I was at the polling place when the doors opened at 6:30 this morning so that I could exercise one of of my biggest constitutional rights and vote for the elected official of my choice.

If you are reading this BLog and you have not voted or are not a registered voter I would have to ask why not. If you are a registered voter you need to get to the polls and vote. Every vote makes a difference. If you are not registered to vote, then you need to go and do so. It is your one and only chance to decide on what direction either the national, state or local government is heading.

Go out, and make your voice be heard. Vote.

I finally got the site up last night

I finally got the games and everything installed at ShitzNGiggles yesterday. Not much customizng has went into it yet. Going to do a little bit of redesigning the site, creating alogo and maybe changing the color scheme and I still have to install the ads and place them.

I'll add more content and games this week as I start to customize the site.

ShitzNGiggles.com

As I have mentioned before, I registered the domain name shitzngiggles.com and wanted to develop it into a commercial site in one way or another. Just by the name, the theme needs to be time wasting stuff such as games. I did it with the intention of just developing a site that will generate traffic and I can run google ads on and make a few extra coins.

The first site I was going to purchase contained over 1,600 games. The more I started looking at it and I noticed that I wouldn't even have spent any time playing these games. The games were imitations of other games, and they played slow and really weren't that entertaining.

I kept searching for a template that I felt comfortable with. I wanted a user friendly site that would first give me a nice base of games that I would actually play and one that I could easily add the games that I want to be on the site.

I actually found a site that would support .flv files (Flash Video like YouTube and other sites) as well as numerous other formats.

I found one last night that I really felt comfortable with. Both with the existing content and the ability to add and organize new content. One that has a few nice features including printing out the code for you to put the game on Blogger or MySpace etc.

Let's not forget to mention that the site I feel more comfortable with was a little over 1/3 the price I was initially leaning towards purchasing. I've already bought the script and have paid for them to install it in case there are any problems. I'm learning MySQL and PHP and could install it (did it as a test on my old server), but I want them to come in and get it 100% up and running with the content.

This is the Template that will be installed.

Let's get it on

Well, the day has finally arrived. The one game on WVU's schedule that everyone had a red circle around as the biggest game of the season. Tonight at 7:30 on ESPN the undefeated and 3rd ranked West Virginia Mountaineers will travel to Louisville Kentucky to take on the 5th ranked and undefeated Louisville Cardinals.

The winner of this game will in all likelihood be one of the two teams that play in the BCS plus one game for the 2006 NCAA National Championship in Phoenix Arizona most likely against the winner of the #1 Ranked Ohio State v #2 Ranked Michigan that will take place in a couple of weeks.

If tonights game is anything like last years game, a 46-44 Triple OT game, then this game should be something to watch.

If you would have listened to the pre-season Heisman Trophy Hype, both teams would have had a total of four strong contenders for the trophy. Louisville lost Running Back Michael Bush early in the season to a season ending injury and QB Brian Brohm will be leading the Cards tonight. West Virginia has two strong Heisman candidates in QB Pat White and backfield mate Steve Slaton.

This should be a very good game, and I give the Mountaineers a slight edge in what I would think should be a close game. We'll have to wait and see though.

Holloween last night

Lat night it was cold and rainy, not your ideal conditions for kids running around trick or treating. The year before Jean had an estimated 400 trick or treaters visit her seeking the immeasurable childhood treasure of free candy.

Halloween is always an event in East Gate Manor, it is about four miles worth of houses in four loops with one common exit and entrance. Houses are spaced just trick or treater friendly so that a motivated child can obtain a very good CPM (Thats Candy Per Minute) rate.

There are basically four one mile interconnected blocks in East Gate Manor, being that we moved up there in 1982, the house sits in what could be the block that is most trick or treaty friendly as far as the topography of the land, but is also the block that contains the entrance and the most road traffic.

Overall and despite the rains, I would venture to say that jean had a comparable number of children visit that she had last season. She had a BIG mixing bowl full of candy bars that was emptied during the first hour of trick or treating. I was sitting there at 6:30 with three pieces of candy and about 30 kinds walking up the driveway. Thanks to some quick action by Jean and Sandy, the bowl magically refilled and the tricksters were satisfied and move to the next house. We did do a second refill at about 6:50 and that carried us till the end of trick or treating at 7:30.

Of course anyone who ever visits the Hall household will tell you about the excess of good food. Jean never seems to disappoint. She ordered a stack of Little Caesars Pizza's and made french fries, these little smiley faced french fries and onion rings. She made a large amount of Sloppy Joes to go with everything. Needless to say I think everyone even took a plate home with them and there is still a lot of food left over.

It was a great night and a memorable night for everyone.