Christmas Eve Pics

Link to latest additions from Christmas eve. Here are a few random pics, go to the album to see all the pics from Christmas eve.


Merry Christmas

NORAD is Tracking Santa Claus

Yes boys and Girls, Santa Claus has officiall started his Journey. Keep track of St. Nick and his journey around the world with NORAD.

Keep track of Santa as he works his busiest night of the year visiting all the good boys and girls around the world.

Special time of the year.

It's finally here. The one day of the year that we all look foreward to. In my family, I think the biggest event of the holidays is Christmas Eve. It's a time of the year when we all get together, put aside our differences and just enjoy spending time with family. Last year we had Christmas Eve at the Old Country Inn, this year it is returning to its traditional home.

It's amazing sometimes when and where you see and meet people. I was at Wal-Mart last night and I saw Amy and Val. It's nice to see that these two sisters were spending the day Christmas shopping together. After I left Wal-Mart last night, I had to make a return trip at about 2:30AM. I ran into Patty (Toth) Dewitt. I enjoyed conversing with her for a little while and she caught me up on Michaels new addition to the family Christopher Michael Toth.

I told her about Christmas Eve and that Jean keeps saying she needs to go see Christopher Michael, so maybe there will be a little surprise tonight.

I've seen some Christmas Magic work, and it's some pretty powerful stuff. I don't know what Christmas Eve 2005 has in store for it, but whatever it is it usually one for everyone to remember.

I think my most influential Christmas Eve of my life was 1998. After a few years of Hiatus, the Hall Family Christmas was once again in full swing. We had convinced my dad that we wanted to have Christmas Eve there and he really wasn't into it. However, December 24th has some kind of magic associated with it and at the last minute he switched shifts with someone else to join in on the family fun. There definately was some magic to that day, because the ceremonial Christmas eve that had returned to its roots was the last one for dad. We lost him 7 months later. For me, it was a magical night that one of the single most influential people in my life walked back into my life.

It was a night when Jane and I started speaking again, and I think the night that I realized I really didn't want to be with Jackie anymore, even though we had split months earlier, we were still on and off. Less than a month after that night, Jane made me look at Life differently and the next thing you know I'm assembling an entrance application for West Virginia University. The rest is history.

Years have went by and other Christmas Eves have come and passed. I don't know what tonight has to offer, it can always be the the doorway to a life changing event for someone else as it was for me. What ever happens tonight I know it will be special. It has to be, because anytime you can have all your family members associated in one place and it's not a Funeral, it is special, even if it were merely for five minutes.

2005 VARGIS Christmas Party

Last Night, my company had our 2005 Company Christmas party in Frostburg. It was a great evening and the food was great.

I was named the 2005 VARGIS, LLC Employee of the year. That was a nice little added surprise on the evening.

He's still alive (aka Tidbits)

* Yes I know, it has been a while since I have Blogged. People are probably wondering if I still exist or did I lose interest. I've been a little under the weather this week and am just now starting to honestly feel better.

* Christmas is coming up real soon and plans have been made, changed and then rechanged again. You sometimes have to think that this family would make a good soap opera, or at least a sit com.

* Terri, Gary and myself went to Jean's last Saturday and helped put up the Christmas decorations. It was the first time I had seen or talked to Terri in a while, so it was nice to catch up with her a little on things.

* Nick and Terri have shut down the Country Inn. They are planning on opening up "Nick and Terri's" on Rt. 73 near the Goshen Road exit before the end of the year. I'll be sure to keep everyone updated as things happen and the new establishment opens.

* Val has indicated that she is interested in continuing her education at the Vo-Tech center. I really didn't get a chance to talk to her about it much, but I think she is going into medical Billing.

* I did manage to finally put up a few pictures from Thanksgiving, they are in my renamed Holidays Album. I think I am also going to put this years Christmas pictures in there as well.

* Brittany is in for the Holidays from Linsley. I know Kim was very happy to finally have her baby home for the Holidays.

* Speaking of Kim, she captured a great movie of Robert shooting a dear last week. You couldn't ask for a better opportunity than what she had and she hit a game winning grand slam with it. I tried to put it up on where I host my movies, but it only brought in a portion of the movie.

* Tomorrow is my companies Christmas Party. It's on a Sunday night, so I will be staying in Frostburg Sunday Night and commuting about 5 mins to work. Wow what a change that will be. Maybe I should drive to Frederick and back before work so I can keep in practice.

* I have noticed one thing this week. Morgantown only gets a small portion of snow that Frostburg gets. I left work Thursday and there was 12" of snow I had to remove from my car before I could leave. I get back to Morgantown and it's raining. No snow on the ground and to warm to snow. Have I ever mentioned I hate snow?

* I'm going to take my camera to work with me on Monday, or should I say with me for the Christmas Party, hopefully I can get a few nice pics so everyone can see the people I work with on a daily basis.

* Speaking of work, I had an interview with an Engineering firm in Mon County a couple weeks ago. They are interested, but I'm getting the impression that they don't want to offer me what I was asking. It could be that they are waiting on equipment, but for once in my life I didn't interview for a job out of necessity, but rather out of just exploring my options.

Since it's been a while since I posted, I thought I would leave everyone with a couple Christmas gifts.




I'll Be Home for Christmas.



Holly Jolly Christmas


And how about my Encore just for good nature.



Wonderful World

Have a great day.

Survivor Guatemala Final

Tonight was the Survivor Guatemala Final, unfortunately I am a little under the weather and have taped it so I can view it tomorrow, however I am awake when the Million Dollars was awarded to Danni Boatwright. She was the last one standing and beat Steph in the final two.

Happy Birthday Kim

Today is December 4th, I would like to take this chance to extend a very Happy Birthday wish to my Sister Kim. She's a year younger than I am, but I seem to forget what that number is because I tend to celebrate anniversaries of previous birthdays.

So to Kim, I hope today is a special day for you. May your coffee be the perfect temperature, may you get enough rest and enough to eat. I hope that everything goes exactly how you choose.



As I look back on the years,
I realize there have been so many times
when my heart has been touched by your kindness...

So many times,
when something you said helped me to see a solution;
Or something you had done helped to brighten my day.
So many times,
when your wide open arms and soft gentle smile,
helped to ease all my troubles away.

Thank you for making such a beautiful
difference in my life...so many times.

Survivor Night

I missed last week because it coincided with the back yard brawl. Seems like I missed Gary Hogeboom being voted off last week. If you need a review of what happened, you can read about it here. I was a a little bit too occupied watching a great football game.

This weeks show starts off as usual as a review of what happened last week. The final six survivors are contemplating who will be the next to go, Danni is the last remaining member of her tribe, so it would be good guess that she will be the next to go.

The rewards challenge is an auction that gave survivors a dollar amount and food items were auctioned off. First was Beef jerky, then three chocolate chip cookies, then a mosquito net, a Philly steak sandwich and fries, a sealed envelope that needs to remain sealed until the immunity challenge, a visit with family members to stay over night, plus the winner was allowed to pick two other survivors to allow them to stay with their family, leaving half of the survivors visiting people from home and three with no one.

Danni won the envelope that contained something that could possibly help them win immunity, but it was not revealed as to what it could be. I guess we are going to have to wait and see as to what it is that will give her a unique advantage in the immunity challenge. If she were to win immunity, it would reveal who the alliances pecking order would be.

The immunity challenge was a big puzzle that they had to complete. Danni's envelope that she won during the auction was a card that allowed her to change positions with any other player at any time during the puzzle solving. The first person to solve the puzzle wins immunity. It was enough to allow her to switch places with Steph and she managed to be the one winning immunity. This means one oof the five remaning alliance members would be going home tonight. Lydia I would imagine seems to be the odd member out of the alliance, but they also could get rid of the biggest threat of Rafe.

I have my own personal favorite that I would like to be seen gone, but it could be interesting to see who will be the next player who will be joining the jury.

At Tribal Council I got my Birthday gift when the asshole Judd Seargant was sent home.



Bye Bye Asswipe!

How much is your BLOG worth

My blog is worth $2,258.16.
How much is your blog worth?

Backyard Brawl 2005

No, I didn't do this one, but it's good enough to post here.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Turkey day everyone. I hope that everyone has a pleasant day and has the opportunity to increase their waist size an inch or two on this day.

For anyone who would like a brief description of the Thanksgiving Story, I found a site that is rather well written and gets to the point. I was going to cut and paste it here, but it's copywrited and I don't want to tick off the author, so I linked it for everyone.

My plans today are to go to Jean's and eat Thanksgiving dinner and then later tonight I am going to miss my favorite TV show Survivor so that I can watch WVU beat Pitt's ass in the Backyard Brawl.

I'm making sue my batteries are charged up, so I will try to take a few pictures of today for everyone to enjoy. I might even take my tripod up and try to get a few family portraits of everyone.

Some tidbits and information for everone. Kim was back in the hospital the past week to have her stent removed and there were some minor complications. She is going to have another surgery next week. She spent last weekend in the hospital and I know she hates it with a passion. She's getting better and was released to go home Monday. So she will be enjoying the holiday form home.


I still haven't spoken with Terri in some time. From my understanding they are going to close the Country Inn and are trying to open another establishment on Rt. 73 where the building overhead is not such a burden on them. I'll provide more details when I get them. Jean said that they will be at the Country Inn tonight for the last performance by the Chicken Pickers.

This will be the first year in some time that everyone will not be goign Bowling this evening, however we're playing a sold out football game on ESPN tonight at the same time period, so we are taking a year off from bowling.

Gain a few pounds.

Survivor Guatemala

Once again it is that time of the week. The weekend is a day away and it must be time for Survivor. Prayers go out to my sister Kim who will be watching tonight's episode from the hospital once again. She should be going home tomorrow, but tonight she has to watch Judd get voted off from the Hospital.

As you will recall, last weeks show had a nice little twist involved to it. The survivors were ready to vote out former NFL QB Gary Hogeboom, but this seasons show hid an immunity idol somewhere in the deep dark reaches of the forest. Gary, knowing he would have been voted off, found the immunity idol and threw a monkey wrench into the whole strategy.

I noticed in the preshow Popularity Vote that Bobby Jon has surpassed Steph as the most popular survivor. She has managed to have a deathgrip on that top position, amazing that she no longer holds the top spot. Probably because of her alliance with the shipdit that I want to see voted off next.

The rewards challenge was when our eight survivors were broken down into two team of two men and two women each. It was an obstacle course through some knee deep mud to grab a large pot full of corn. They had to maneuver back and dump their pot of corn into a larger pot. The first team of four to fill their pot won the rewards challenge.

The reward for the four winning team members was a chance to stay overnight in a luxury home with all the comforts of home and a chance to relax and get ready for the final run to the million dollars.

Something that has been strongly presented over the past two weeks has been Jamie acting like a complete idiot. He's just trying to pick fights with everyone and isn't making any friends.

For the immunity challenge, it was another obstacle course of untying a large series of knots and manuvering yourself to the end. Rafe was the first to finish the challenge and managed to win himself immunity.

At Tribal Council, hothead Jamie was eliminated.

What is it you do for a living

GIS is a very big and broad field. I've explained it as the worlds best database with geo-referenced pictures. There are so many things that you can do with it and once the data is created, it's interchangeable with other datasets.

Working for VARGIS, I have done some photogrammatry work on planametric data, but mostly I have been doing GIS projects.

Today I was introduced to a site that is pretty close to what we are doing. This is the end result of the data in an IMS system. It's merely one parcel (not one we did), but the client specs look very similar to a project we are currently working on for Western Maryland.

This is a very user friendly end product for everyone to get an idea of what I do. I basically assemble all these datasets in a geodatabase. Everything you would see in the window, is what I do.


Have fun and enjoy

Survivor Guatemala

Once again it's Wed night and it's Survivor night. Going to keep it brief tonight, got a few other things going on behind the scenes so my attention is limited for tonight.

In the rewards challenge, shipdit Judd won the challenge where they had to throw an arrow to see who was the closest to throw an arrow to a Target. Everyone wins a meal, but since Judd was closest, he wins a Steak and Lobster dinner.

At the immunity challenge, the survivors had to navigate through a three part obstacle course with four survivors going to the second part, two survivors going to the finals and one survivor left standing after navigating through the robe bridge at the final. Jamie Newton was the immunity winner tonight.

At Tribal Council, former NFL QB Gary Hogeboom found the other immunity idol and was also given immunity. Nice twist to the game considering he was going home tonight. However, after the vote, former survivor player Bobby Jon Drinkard was the next player voted out and was the first member of the jury.

Congrats Moke

As I was getting off work yesterday and walking to my car, I noticed that I had a message on my phone and it was from Pam and Georges number. So, I called back before checking my message to see what was up. What was up was my Nephew Mokie had accomplished a goal that he set out for himself over the summer. Last year, he barely missed the honor role and was determined to make it this year.

The news was good, he just found out yesterday that he made the Honor Roll at Clay Battelle High School. While I was talking to him I could tell he was on cloud nine and felt very proud of him accomplishment. Now he has his eyes set on something that I could never achieve, he's going to try and pull off a 4.0 GPA. I think he can do it.

He went off to a camp this spring that prepares High School students for college life and I think this has been a big inspiration to him. He's already taken his ACT and is waiting on those results. He's wanting to attend He says he plans to go into Engineering at WVU.

I think he's finally realized his potential and he sees that the sky is the limit.

Congrats Moke!

A New Multi-Media File

I decided to do another multi-media file. I knew it was about time that I produce another one and was looking for ideas. I was looking through my music and saw a song that I felt I could do a file to, and incorporate old family video footage rather than my traditional photos.

So, dedicated readers, here is another viseo. I hope you like it.

Hmm, just surfing and found this

first rank and of left on the right
Yohann Gregorzick, Eric Dohm, Sabine Vain, Eric..., Anjoushree Nandi, Valerie Poncin, Nathalie Nightingale.
second rank
Nihat Rehmani, David Heneuse..., Philippe Leonard, Vincent Jadin, Stéphane Luca, Picardy Lydia.
third rank
Eric Tshilembe, Lionel Deneys, Eric Bednarzick, Patricia Feys, Christel..., Yolande Van Potelsbergh, Mrs Clepkens

Survivor Guatemala

Once again it's survivor night. On an ironic note I am watching a football game between Pitt and Louisville before the start of survivor. It's 7-7 0:25 seconds into the game and there hasn't been a snap taken yet. Wow, that's going to be a game. Speaking of games, on to Survivor.

On the Game's pre-show, I checked the popularity poll and with no surprise Steph is tops in the popularity poll. Last week after tribal council, Jeff through a big surprise and announced that the merge was taking place right then and there. So no more Yaxha or Nakum tribes and there will be a new united tribe and no more tribal immunity, now everyone plays for individual immunity.

At the start of the show, Jeff threw another monkey wrench into the equation and that was the fact that in the somewhere hidden in the jungle, there was hidden a six inch immunity idol that would allow the person who found it a chance to use it at anytime through throughout the rest of the game. It could be used this week or it could be used as strategy to help secure themselves a spot in the final two later in the game, provided they last that long. The only deal is that they have to announce prior to the tribal council that they want to use it, that they are in fact going to use it. I think it adds a new and unique twist to the game. Kudos to Jeff for keeping the game interesting. If Judd finds it, he should be shot at dawn though.

On day 20, the merged tribe came up with a new name for the tribe. They came up with the name Xhakum by merging the names of the two tribes together. Although you could see that the remaining members of the two tribes still had alliances with each other. There are the five people and one asshole that make up the Nakum tribe against the four remaining member of Yaxha.

At the immunity challenge, Jeff threw another monkey wrench into the game. Everyone showed up and had a choice, if they did not want to take part in the immunity challenge and felt they would not be voted off, they didn't have to. They would be allowed to take part in a big feast. However, if they felt they could be going home, they could take part in the immunity challenge, however they would not be allowed to take place in the feast of food. The immunity challenge was basically standing on a log with a pot on their heads for the longest period of time. At the end of one hour, there was a tie breaker, they had to put the pot on their head and had to climb the pyramid without breaking their pot. At the tie-breaker, former NFL Quarterback Gary Hogeboom won the immunity challenge tie breaker and won the individual immunity.

At tribal council, Brandon Bellinger was voted out by a 6-4 vote.

Testing a new feature

This is a test using an old Video file Mom did last year.