Good Bye 2006

At the end of each year it is nice to be able to reflect back on the previous 365 days of your life and remember the events and the things that made up your year and how everything seemed to have worked out.

I have been a blogger now for two and a half years and this will complete the second full calendar year of being a blogger. I hope you enjoy my reflections based on my BLOG as much as I have writing them.

January

* The year started out with a great 39-35 Sugar Bowl win by WVU over Georgia. It was a great time to be a Mountaineer and probably the programs finest hour.

* I had made a decision in January to re-market myself in 2006, it turned out pretty well for me.

* Nick and Terri officially opened their second bar when they opened Nick and Terri's.

February

* The damn groundhog was once again not cooperative with me and the rat saw his shadow. Maybe I will try a different approach in 2007.

* The Pittsburgh Steelers win Super Bowl XXXX making me one happy fan.

* Morgantown lost funny man Don Knotts when he passed away in February. Best known for his role as Barney Fife on the Andy Griffith show, Knotts was a 1942 Graduate of Morgantown High School.

March

* ESRI had contacted me about being a GIS instructor. They are the inventors and innovators in my field and this was a huge compliment even though I never followed through on it.

* Jean went to Huntington to pick up Gussey, her pet African Grey with the huge vocabulary.

April

* My softball team got together and helped open up MVP Paintball park with an opening day paintball battle against local readio station WVAQ. VAQ managed to get the better of us that day, but none the less it was a lot of fun.

May

* May saw me have a job interview and have my first Primanti Brothers sandwich.

* I started working from home during May and bought a new computer. It meant I no longer had to drive 700 miles a week going back and forth to work.

* Moke and Ang had their prom and both graduated from High School and from MTECH as well as Amy and Mary.

June

* It was summer and softball season was in full force. This is my favorite time of the year.

July

* The 4th of July holiday weekend was my busiest of the year. Just a litle recap:

4 Pic Nics
3 Texas Hold Em Tournaments
Karaoke
Fireworks
Family Reunion
Paintball
Wiffle Ball Game
105 Pictures Taken
A Large Water Battle
A chance to sit and talk with Trish and Jackie
A Day of swimming

* Pam and Kim broke a silence and started speaking. Kim was having some health equipment problems and Pam was the clutch hitter who delivered.

* We welcomed the birth of Joshua Robert Nicholson into the family.

August

* The students returned to Morgantown

8 Mark Snider (Rich's son) officially started Alliance Reality.

September

* The month started with me enjoying a nice five day weekend. My longest break in some time.

* I went to a MHS football game with a couple old friends and team mates when Me, Smitty and Popeye took a trip to East Fairmont.

* We had a goodbye picnic for Moke as he was getting ready to leave for Basic Training. He has since completed it and is currently in his AIT training, although he is currently home visiting everyone for the Christmas Holiday.

October

* October was my most active month as a BLOGGER since I started blogging. I made 37 posts in 31 days.

* Moved my website from its original host to a new host (probably why there are so many broken picture links).


* The Gospel Singing Koon Family celebrated their 40th year of singing together with a concert at Morgantown High School.

* Morgantown saw the opening of two new Super Wal-Marts and a Sams's club.

November

* I started a new website, called shitzngiggles.com

* My Blog saw its 500th post since I had started blogging. It's an accomplishment I am proud of. t is something that takes time and commitment to accomplish.

December

* The softball team got together and we had a nice little Christmas party. It was nice to see the guys during the midway point of the off season.

* We celebrated Christmas at Nick and Terri's

This was my 2006 according to my Blog. It was a good year and my blog managed to end this this 258th post of the year.

I hope everyone has a safe and Happy New Year and we will see you on the other side, that is the year 2007.

2006's Goals and How I did

This will be my next to last Blog post for the year of 2006. Tomorrow, I will do a the second of what I hope to be annual yearly reflections of my life based on events that I placed in my Blog over the previous year. You can look at last years post Good Bye 2005 to get somewhat of an expectation as to what tomorrows BLOG will be.

Now, on to this post and my personal year end report to myself on the status of my goals I set for myself in 2006

Family Situation

In 2006 I wanted to complete a journey that I had initially started right after Christmas 2004. There was an unsettling family feud that I wanted to see ended. It was a failed goal of mine for 2005, but in 2006 I think things have started to resolve themselves. I really didn't need to intervene one bit, and the any emotional family walls were mutually demolished and a new beginning has begun.

There is still a small ways to go, but that 300' high hurdle has been jumped and it should be a smooth race from here on out.


Career

I addressed this a couple of ways in 2006, first was to not relocate to Frostburg Maryland and second was to re-market myself. What ultimately happened was I have been given the opportunity to work from home (greatly increasing my productivity) and with my financial goals for 2006 as far as a salary increase met.

I was offered a Job in Pittsburgh, but my current company stepped forward and did what they could to retain my services, and then unknowingly met my minimal financial expectations after they increased my quality of life by allowing me to stay at home and close to my family.

I felt I was a winner regardless of which direction I chose, but the situation that I am in would have been the ideal one for me and made me happiest even though it wasn't even an option at the start of the year.


Health

I still haven't picked out a Doctor, but I have shed roughly 40 pounds over the last 12-13 months and feel pretty good. I have walked a few miles this past year and actually feel pretty good.

There are always aging issues to deal with, but I feel good, still play softball and enjoy walking.


Personal life

How do you top what my sports teams accomplished in 2005. It is next to impossible and none of them lived up to their 2005 performances, but I am still a fan and always will be.



Relationships

Yikes. I did sign up for a dating service in 2006, but I have little to no faith in these services anymore. I think it was filled with a bunch of members who just wanted to test the market and never really push it to that next level. I met a few nice people, but how do you know if its there over the internet. I'm one who has to see the eyes and talk to them.


Overall I am very happy with three out of the four categories and will have to chalk 2006 up as a successful year for myself. I will continue to live up to my previous New Years Resolution to never make another New Years resolution again.

I will over the next month or so be once again re-evaluating my life and setting goals that I would like to accomplish for myself in the following year.

I hope everyone met their 2006 goals and will do the same in 2007.

The amanly way of getting rid of Bees

I saw this while browsing the internet today and just had to share it.

Enjoy

Sad News

This morning Mom called me and informed me that a cousin of mine had died in a plane crash yesterday. Diane Efaw was Uncle Dana's daughter and a nurse in transit to New York.

My deepest sympathy goes to Dana and his family in this shocking time period.

Christmas 2006

Christmas 2006

Dancing Elves

Gary Dancing


Me Dancing

Amy

A cute little game

I found this cute little game today. Winterbells. So far my high score is 12980

We Are Marshall

Today is the official release date of the movie "We Are Marshall". It is the true story of Marshall Universities rebuilding from the Plane Crash that killed everyone on the plane.

Below is an old file that I found done by Nate Ruffin. He was the co-captain of that team that died and stayed home due to injury and did not make the trip.

Ruffin has since passed away, but I thought it was a nice little short that will help people better understand the movie a little better.

Tibits

I am one who does not like to let a BLOG go stale, I feel that when it goes stale that you lose the interest of a readerbase. Maybe it is time to do a tiddbits.

* Christmas is coming up this weekend, the festivities will be held at Nick and Terri's bar. Bring a covered dish.

* Yesterday I looked into the possibility of renting Klaer Lodge for Christmas eve. It opened up briefly yesterday because of a cancellation, but I don't know if that option is available anymore.

* Bobby and Val helped Gary move over this past weekend. He is relocating off of the Grafton Road to a place off of Summers School Road.

* Everyone has had the flue in the past week or so. I have been fortunate enough to actually avoid it, but Erica, Josh, Val, Bobby, Hean, Rich, Gary and Kim have all been nailed with it. From the sounds of it, I am glad I have managed to avoid it this year.

* Everyone is still trying to track down a Elmo TXM doll.

* Work has been pretty steady for me the past few weeks, I am currnetly enjoying a time of waiting on some data, hence the Blog post.

* Kim and Terri have started speaking again, it has been three years and a few BS scenerios later, they have intiated conversation between the two. I haven't been able to get any details yet other than it went well. I'm sure if you are more interested, there will be a entry at Kim's Blog. Stay tuned.

* Moke will be coming in on Christmas Eve and will be home for fifteen days before he returns for the completion of his AIT training.

* The weather has been semi-cooperative as of late in regards to temperatures, but today it seems like the the temps have dropped to a winter like level.

* The Winter Solstice is but a couple days away. Other than Christmas, I hate winter and I hate snow. I prefer nice warm spring or summer weather where the air is clean and clear with oxygen generated by all the foliage.

Texas Hold Em Round 3

Last night was round three of ten of our qualifying for the San Julian Texas Hold Em Tournament. We had one surprise cancellation as my sister Kim took ill and went to bed in the mid afternoon because she has caught the virus bug and was sidelined. She slept the whole way through and no one got to even see her, I hope she is feeling better.

Kirby brought his girlfriend? who happens to be a math major at Penn State. Let's just say she pretty much cleaned everyones clocks in this round of Poker. I tried on three occasions to take players out but came up short on all three occasions, one of which was a three player showdown where my Jack that I needed just never managed to show up.

We never had a declared winner, Robert and the math savant from Penn State decided when it came to heads up and they were about even in chips to split the pot. I can't complain, I played hard and strong, but came up short on a good hand.

Another round of Texas Hold Em

It's time for round three (of ten) for our Texas Hold Em tournament tonight. I haven't been doing to well in these tournaments, and I know why. So, I am going to have to address that and show a considerable amount of patience tonight.

I'm used to playing a quick game and this game has a lot of distractions which works against me. I get frustrated and get aggressive at times I shouldn't be. That and last time I didn't get many cards coming my way, that helps even when you do get frustrated.

Wish me luck tonight.

Below smoking weight

As many of you know, I was a smoker for sometime and quit smoking in May of 2002. Well, something many people do when they stop smoking is start eating more and usually gain weight, in my case I gained weight, lost weight and gained even more weight than I had before I started losing it.

Since leaving Helmick where I worked 11-12 hours a day 5-6 days a week pouring metal, my weight slowly progressd in an upward fashion. Going from strenuous manual labor in sometimes areas where the room heat reached 120 at times to an educational and office setting lowers the amount of calories that you burn on a day to day basis.

Then when I quit smoking a few years ago after finals week, that did, but didn't really help matters. Stopping smoking is not something I would ever regret, but it added additional weight to the weight I had already gained since my Helmick days.

A little over a year ago my weight got to its highest number, and that number being about 5% more than I would have ever wanted to weigh at an absolute max. My weight topped well over 300 pounds (actually 314) and it was starting to be a concern.

This morning, I stepped on the scale and saw a very pleasant surprise when I saw that I am getting close to my weight from my days at Helmick (I've lost roughly 40 of the 50 pounds I gained). I'm feeling good.

My Feb 19 post on year goals. Not quite 100% complete, but all areas were addressed this past year.

Maybe it is time for me to start to prepare next years goals.

What a nice day

It's been a pretty good day so far. The weather has been very cooperative and actually reaching the upper 60's for a temperature. Not too bad for the middle of December, hopefully it will end up being a very mild winter this year. I actually have the mild luxury today of having my front door open to let in a fresh breeze our the cool clean mountain air. A small apartment with a heating unit can make the apartment smell well, like a heating unit. I'll take the fresh air every time.

Today at work was kind of a slow one for me. I work through a VPN that runs through Sterling Virginia and from there I access my computer in Frostburg MD. Today, for most of the day Sterling had a power outage. Meaning I can't access the network or my license that I need.

I managed to pass a little time playing the waiting game, I rented Talladega Nights, the Story of Ricky Bobby today. I am going to have to find another way around these new Blue Disc technologies. They have a strange file structure and for some reason I can't make a back up copy to this format.

You will notice that Morgantown Traffic will become less bothersome as the week goes by. This is fall Semester Finals Week at WVU and once the students finish their finals, those from out of town will be heading home for the next month to enjoy a nice winter break.

WVU Basketball

We're already off to a 7-1 start. Johnnie West is Jerry Wests son.

Softball Team Christmas Party

Last night was the first time since we drafted our fantasy Football league this September that I had a chance to spend some time with some guys from our Softball team.

Paul and Laura Gunter hosted the nights festivities at their home. It was great seeing the guys, and we had a nice little gift exchange and made a game out of it. The parameters were you needed to bring a Male/Female gift within a price range and wrapped. We then drew numbers 1-12 in our case last night. The person in position 1 had the first pick and the last play. They select a gift and they have to open it so everyone can see it. Then person 2 goes and they have an option of either selecting another unmarked gift, OR selecting a gift that was previously selected. If they choose a previously selected gift, then they take that gift and the person who lost their gift then selects another wrapped gift as a replacement.

You continue to do this until everyone has selected a wrapped gift, then as the games final play, the person in position 1 can trade his gift with any other person once all the gists are unwrapped.

It was a great time and a great evening.

Message from Kim this morning

My sister Kim and Brittany are on a one day Holiday shopping trip to New York City this morning. About a half an hour outside of the city they stopped to take a rest stop and came across a very unique sign.

What kind of a place do you have to be in where they have to post that only one person is allowed in the shower..LOL

My guess is that they have stopped at a truck stop, and to prevent truckers from trying to minimize expenses they came up with a one person one shower rule.

Not sure how I feel about this rule, you know if she's cute enough...

I know I have said that I hate snow

Maybe it's not the snow that I completely hate, maybe it is the shorter days and cold weather that prevents you from doing those enjoyable summer time activities. To try to combat a case of cabin fever, I have been visiting a few stores around town and just walking around.

Football season is basically over with, all except the rumors of Rich Rodriguez going to Alabama and the High School season is completed.

I have played around with things like second life and have seen some of the Role Playing Games that George Plays such as Everquest or World of Warcraft.

I need to find something to occupy my free time.

Happy Birthday Kim

Today is December 4th, and it is also my younger sister Kim's birthday, so I would like to extend to her a very heartfelt Happy Birthday.

Anyone wanting to shoot her a Happy Birthday e-mail you can do so by e-mailing her at
kimsanjulian@gmail.com.

Happy Birthday Kim.

What a game last night.

It has been to say a very eventful week here in Morgantown when it comes to Mountaineer Football. Last night the regular season ended with a 41-39 Triple OT win against Rutgers. It was a great game and either team had their chances to win, we just ended up prevailing in Overtime.

Over the past week, there have been numerous rumors that were circulating around Morgantown and the internet that Rich was going to leave Morgantown to accept the head coaching job at Alabama. Some internet reports even had him accepting the job as early as today and even had contract details.

However Friday Rich while preparing his team for Saturday's night game took time out of his schedule to address and deny the rumors that had grown out of control.

Greg Hunter, the author of the original article that had him accepting the Alabama job has back tracked his statements since. Listen to the audio on the previous link, Rich was to say the least pissed off.

The Mountaineers ended the regular season ranked #12, 10-2 on the season and have accepted a invitation to play Georgia Tech in the Gator Bowl.

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.

Happy Halloween

Tonight is that one night of the year when children dress up as ghosts, queens, and any other identity to mask who they are. It is Holloween night and the trick or treaters will be out in full force.

Last year we all went to Jean's up at East Gate and had in the area of 400 Trick or Treaters show up at her doorstep (I moved the DNS so the pictures will be gone. Of course last year it went on for two hours from 5:30-7:30, I think they are staying with Morgantown's guidelines this year of 6:00-7:00. I spoke with Jean this morning and she said they normally contact her about hours of trick or treating, but they have not contacted her this season.

Of course, I will be in tow with my camera and grab a few images. I will probably post the pictures exclusivley on my Blog, because I haven;t yet decided how I am going to set up the new picture host, however the previous version is still up and running.

Secret Santa 2006

I was talking with Val online this evening. She has said that her and Gary are organizing the Secret Santa this year and would like to get a list of people participating by November 22nd so that we can be ready to pick names by Thanksgiving.

If you are participating this year, try to send val an e-mail at trouble158@hotmail.com and let her know that you would like to participate this year. You can also call her at 296-1091.

New BCS ratings are out.

West Virginia is now officially in the BCS ratings and Louisville is ranked number five. This is going to make this Thursdays nights game a big one, the winner will in all probabilities have the inside tract for the National Championship game.

The top two teams in the BCS are currently Ohio State and Michigan, and they will meet and play against each other on November 18th at Ohio State. The winner of this game will go into the BCS Championship game as the #1 team and the Winner of the WVU Louisville game will most likely go in as #2 provided the winner wins out.

There is an ironic monkey wrench that could be thrown into the entire scenario, both WVU and Louisville still will play Rutgers this season, Rutgers is currently ranked #12 in the BCS poll.

You know, a few years ago the ACC raided the Big East and took Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College. Many people believed that this would kill the Big East as a BCS Conference. The Big East has three teams in the top 12 and the ACC has none. The number 12 ranking is significant, because it was previously the measuring stick on a conferences BCS credibility.

OK, IF WVU beats Louisville, Rutgers and manages to beat Pitt in the Backyard Brawl we're in the national Championship against the winner of OSU-Michigan. If Michigan wins and WVU wins out I'm going to give everyone a little heads up about the last time these two teams played. We played Michigan 102 years ago and they beat us 0-130 and that is NOT a misprint. I cheering for Ohio State so we don't have to hear that.

New Domain Name

As many of you may have read on here in the past few weeks or heard on the Guest Audio Block with Pink Camo, I have decided to move my site to a new larger host. I also mentioned that I was going to purchase another name to go with it. Well, I finalized the purchase a little while ago and have bought the domain name. I have purchased the name ShitzNGiggles.com and will develop the site more for entertainment than anything else.

I'm thinking about buying a gaming package and installing it. I have found a site that sells some nice PHP Sites that you can buy and customize. I have found one, 2 or3 sites that I may like. I'm not going to rush in to any judgment, I want to find a site that will allow me to generate the maximum amount of traffic that I can and stay with that theme. I'll run some google adds and banners and see if I can manage to generate a coin or two off of this venture.

One other thing, once I moved servers, my sites comes up on google searches much more often.

My Website is moved and updated

The DNS servers started kicking in and reading the new host allowing me to move my site. I have updated a few links, killing some no longer significant in the navigation bar and updated those that needed updated.

Now comes the daunting task of trying to move the Picture site. Yikes.

Some tidbits for Friday

* We have made it to yet another Friday and we are on the verge of yet another weekend. I've been a little busy at work this week trying to meet a deadline for a project. I'm not the bottleneck, I am the solution.

* Good luck to Amy, she has a job interview today at Ruby in the daycare department. I want to wish her the best of luck and hope she gets it.

* I see the DNS servers are starting to recognize the domain change. When you go to my site now you should start seeing the moving page. The MX server for my e-mail is still setting up, so my e-mail isn't working yet. However I have set up my FTP client to the new site. It's just a matter of making a few cosmetic changes and uploading it. The pictures will still be housed at the old site until I can recreate it or redo it on the new site. I will make a slow transition to the new site before I kill it at the old server. It may take a few months.

* Tonight is the MoHawk Bowl. A football game between Morgantown's two rival High Schools in University High and Morgantown High. The game will be played at Milan Puskar Stadium at Mountaineer Field tonight and Smitty has already called me about going to the game. If anyone else plans on going let me know.

* I made a much over due trip to rails ton trails yesterday. I was starting to feel a little bit of cabin fever and needed to get out and enjoy some good, clean, fresh air.


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

More of a formatting test, but fun anyways

Switching Hosts

If anyone needs to visit my website, you will need to use the IP Address of the old site until the DNS sets up.


George-hall.net

You may never even notice, but if you do the page that loads will help you find what you are looking for until I get everything transferred over.

Over the hump

Yes, it is Wednesday and it is over the hump day. The week is now 3/5 of the way over and it is all downhill from here until we get to the weekend.

Not much on the agenda for me this coming weekend, I will be going to the MoHawk Bowl this Friday evening with Smitty. This is a football beating by Morgantown High School of their crosstown rivals University High School.

Other than that not much has been going on with me. I started to play a game called Second Life, this looks like one of those internet games where a lot of real money is exchanged. Now I just need to figure out a way to get paid rather than paying.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Anyone believe in Deja Vu? It seemed like one year ago today that I was driving back home from Frostburg Maryland and called Morgantown joking that I had seen the first snowfall of the year.

Today, I once again saw the first snowfall of the year, I just hope that this is not a repeat of what happened last year.

Texas Hold Em

Well, my prediction of a good round of Texas Hold Em went out the door today. Didn't really have a very good game, there were a lot of distractions and I just wasn't getting the cards I needed. Other than that it was a pretty good day.

I have taken some pictures of todays events and have placed them on my Picture Site.

I also did a dual podcast today with my sister Kim from Pink Camo. You can either use it by going to her site feed (book mark it while you are there) or you can direct link it from my site HERE. I have also placed Lotties It Is No Secret on my server for anyone who wants to hear the song I was referring to in the podcast.

Hope you have had a good weekend.

Sunday Morning Ramblings

This afternoon, we will enter game 2 of 10 for placement into our Texas Hold Em Tournament. I'm really looking forward to taking everyones money today, it will cover the cost of the new web host that I purchased earlier this week.

I currently stand in seventh place after one round, but this is just for placement and chip count for the final table on the 11th game for the grand prize. I'm feeling pretty good about today, I think I have fine tuned my game over the past few weeks on Party Poker, I had actually won six consecutive tournaments before I lost a heads up yesterday. I had Ace King and was forcing a player to go all in with Ace 2, and wouldn't you know the flop was three deuces to give them four deuces and a king kicker. I lost a heads up to the very first Royal Flush I had ever seen a few weeks ago. I guess if you are going to lose, you should lose in style.

Kim and I may be doing a podcast together prior to the tournament. It is something we have talked about and I think we will probably just sit down and do one this morning. Obviously this is syndicated and if and when it is done she will host it on Pink Camo and I'll also host a copy of it.

I have been running a few ideas through my head the past few days since I purchased web space at GoDaddy. I am still seriously weighing the idea of keeping George-Hall.net at its current location, but maybe doing something a little different with it. Keeping it for its original intent and purpose of using it to market myself professionally. I may turn it into more of a geography site and use that theme and purchase a new domain name for the godaddy account.

A new domain gives me the chance to do other things that I really wanted to avoid at my current host. I am thinking more along the lines of a site powered by PHP rather than a simple static HTML. I'm really wanting to tie in a MySQL database on the back end or maybe switch from a Linux platform to a Windows platform and play around a little bit with ASP.

I have one available name that I have running through my head for the name of the new site and it's ShitzNGiggles.com, but that is an idea and not a purchased name yet. It would be a theme and objective driven site, so before I go any further I would need to have a game plan in place.

I do know I have a very powerful spacious amount of web hosting that I now own and I want to see if I can develop it into something.

Site back up

Wow, hats off to Brian Goldsmith at Mountaineer Hosting for doing a great job in restoring the account back to normal.

I have been thinking about setting up a second domain name for some time, this one would be at my GoDaddy Host. I may just leave George-Hall.net where it is and possibly set up a secondary site that is more for fun rather than business. Not real sure what I am going to do yet, but I have both domain hosts and the price of a new domain name is very minimal.

Either way I have a new powerful host at my disposal. In short at my old site I had a Gigabyte of storage to be able to store files, and I think I was using roughly 500 MB (Half) off the top of my head. At GoDaddy I have 100 Gigabytes at my disposal, so space just became even more irrelevant than ever before. I even have a few more features at GoDaddy that I will integrate into the new site.

If anyone wants to buy a domain name (probably less than $10.00 a year), I'll host the site for you if I know you. Sub domains are free but I request you are semi computer savvy if you want one of these set up.

Anyone got any ideas for a new domain name?

New Host

This will take some time, but I have switched hosts for my website provider. So, I guess the site will be making some changes in the near future, but you may never notice other than not finding my site down as much as it has been.

I have switched to GoDaddy.com

Host Troubles

I am having some serious problems with my webhost. I think they got hacked and are screwing everything up.

It is Friday, how about a little tidbits.

* Today is Friday once again, it means the end of the workweek for most of us and the start of another weekend.

* Kudo's to my Niece Amy , she has really taken to Blogging and has turned into a very active Blogger.She uses her MySpace account to run her Blog and has done a great job of keeping it very active. I read in one of her posts that she has a goal in mind for a post count by a specific date, if you are wondering how many and by when go read her blog and find out yourself.

* I finally got a chance to try CiCi's Pizza earlier this week. I have heard about it for over a year on how inexpensive the pizza buffet is (I think mine was $6.48 for the buffet and an drink). I was impressed, it's a lower quality Pizza, but it will remind you of Pizza Hut's (My favorite) Pan Pizza.

* Talk about a Deja Vu, I was thinking last night that it has been a while since I have heard from Jane. I had an e-mail from her this morning asking me how things are going. Small but strange world.

* The WVU Mountaineers play tonight on ESPN against UCONN in football. It's my High School Football night, but I'll stay home and watch the Mountaineers this evening. We're currently ranked #4 in the AP and Coaches Polls as well as #5 in the BCS.

* Talk about ranked WVU teams, the Women's Soccer team is ranked #6 in the Country and the Men's Soccer Team is ranked 3rd and 4th on the Country. The men's team is really a story when you consider they had some violations this past summer that caused us to fire our previous coach and hire a new coach all just a few short months ago. Quite impressive,WVU has some of the best sports coaches in the country.

* Sunday will be round two of out Texas Hold'Em Tournament. We're moving the game to Sunday Morning to allow Robert some time to hunt tomorrow. He is an avid hunter and has stuck right by Kim through all of her health issues earlier this year, so his vacation time is a little exhausted. Great guy, it just means he may be a little distracted Sunday when I take his money.

* I found out one thing I do not like about the New Blogger, when you spell check it screws your formatting up terribly. Maybe a bug in the programming.

Todays Dominion Post

In todays Dominion Post, there is a nice feature article of the Gospel singing Koon family and how they are coming up close on their 40th anniversary of singing. Aunt Lottie has long passed, but here is one of the last songs that she ever recorded.

It Is No Secret

Saturday evening at 6:00 at Morgantown High there will be a free concert.

The Koon family traveled from 1961-1980 and recorded numerous gospel albums during these years. They used to tour with and open for The Oakridge Boys at one time.

Both New Super Wal-Marts are Open

I have a little bit of downtime this morning at work, there seems to be a network problem with the server in Frostburg, so I am having a little trouble logging on giving me a little downtime until our network administrator gets into the office.

I made a quick trip to the new Super Wal-Mart on 4H Camp road to see what was inside. I think the Super Wal-Mart in Grafton that I traditionally shop at is around 110,000 sq ft store. This one is a 185,000 sq ft store and offers so much more. The store was clean, organized and believe it or not crowded in the early AM. This is a much nicer Super Wal-Mart than the one in Grafton.

On the other side of town we have also opened up a 225,000 sq ft Super Wal-Mart at the University Town Center. I'm completely impressed with the one on my side of town, I can't wait to see the bigger one.

Long Day

I went to my office in Frostburg today, and put in a couple extra hours trying to set up the finalization of a project. It was nice to see everyone again.

After work I stopped off in Amish Country to pick up some Granola for Kim. I got some yogurt flavored pretzels for myself that were quite tasty as a snack on my drive home.

Pam called me this evening and asked if I would be interested in going to Missouri for Moke's graduation at the end of November. I would like to go, but I'm not sure of the timing when it coincides with the delivery date of the project I was finalizing today. We'll have top wait and see.

Tomorrow, Morgantown will be opening both of their new Super Wal-Marts according to todays paper.

US Population nearing 300 Million

The Population of the US is getting closer and closer to 300,000,000 people in our country. The US Census Bureau has a running population clock. At the time of this post we are just under 5,000 people away from 300 Million. Gaining one every 11 seconds . We should reach the 300 Million plateau sometime Tuesday, October 17th.

Happy Birthday Brittany Dae Cummings

I would like to wish my niece Brittany a very happy sweet sixteenth birthday. I have watched this adorable little girl grow up into a very beautiful and intelligent young lady who has taken on some very tough challenges by attending a very hard academic institution.

I have so many memories or the embedded mental sound bytes of her growing up and times and events during her life. It seems like only yesterday I was in the waiting in the hospital waiting room when Ed walked in and said that it was a girl. She has been nothing short of a bundle of joy to watch grow up.

This past weekend she celebrated her sweet sixteenth and her schools homecoming. Kim has been gracious enough to quickly put up the Pictures from Saturday on the web.

If you get a chance today send her an e-mail at brittanydae@yahoo.com and wish the birthday girl a very happy birthday.

Sunday Morning Routine to Change

My Sundays are usually a day when I go through my usual routine of going grocery shopping early on a Sunday Morning. The last few years I have made the 25 or so mile drive down US 119 to the Grafton Super Wal-Mart to do my shopping. I've always liked this store because it was never crowded and it was easy to find what you were looking for.

It was always a nice scenic drive down an old country road, the only times I didn't make the trip was when weather was not being too cooperative and dropped a significant amount of snowfall on the roads.

Today was probably my last visit to the Grafton Super Wal-Mart.

This past week Morgantown opened up it's first Sam's Club in the University Town center and will open a new Super Wal-Mart sometime this week. Next week I will try shopping at Morgantown's first new Super Wal-Mart for a one time deal.

The following week the Super Wal-Mart next to my place will be opening and will be my new local grocery store where I will do the vast majority if not all of my grocery shopping.

I'm going to miss those nice country scenic drives, but I am also really happy that the new Wal-Mart will be a shorter drive than the one at Morgantown Mall.

Homecoming Weekend

It has been Homecoming weekend here in Morgantown and in a few other places. Last night I managed to make it downtown to watch the homecoming parade for WVU. Because of some construction on North High Street, the parade route was altered a little coming down Spruce Street, down Walnut and then onto High Street. I watched the first hour of the parade, but it was running a little long and I left to go to the Morgantown High School game against Parkersburg South. Morgantown won quite handily 33-7.

I left the Morgantown High game at halftime to attend the WVU Men's Basketball teams first practice of the season last night. Surprisingly there were a couple thousand fans who had a similar idea and gave this new group of kids a nice warm welcome by showing up and supporting their team.

We have one of the best college basketball coaches in the country here in Morgantown, so I am very curious to see how his second group of kids will play together and see what kind of a legacy they can leave. These kids will have some big shoes to fill after last seasons departing group. Should be a great year.

Today, WVU just manhandled Syracuse and won 41-17 and gave the fans a nice homecoming win. Quarterback Pat White just stole the show with 15 carries for 247 yards and 4 Touchdowns. We have this other guy named Steve Slaton who had a very quiet 20 carry 163 yard day with one long touchdown run. He's going to have a tough time winning the Heisman Trophy when Pat White puts up numbers like that.

There is one final and most important Homecoming for today, my niece Brittany is celebrating her schools homecoming at Linsley today. I know Kim and Robert went up and are also helping her celebrate her Sweet 16th Birthday (It's Monday) this evening. I'm sure Kim will have a few pictures and a few stories to tell on Pink Camo, so you might want to take a look over there or on her Flicker page for the pictures.

40th Anniversary

I forgot to address this in a previous post, but the Gospel Singing Koon Family will be celebrating their 40th anniversary with an evening of Music for any and all who may be interested.


When: October 21, 2006
Time: 6:00 P.M.
Where: Morgantown High School Auditorium


Admission is free.

College Basketball Practice Starts tonight

We have once again reached that magical time of the week that we all look forward to, Friday and the end of the work week. There are a few things going on today and tonight that may be of some interest to some.

There is supposed to be a Parade tonight in downtown Morgantown for the WVU homecoming. The Football team will take on Syracuse tomorrow and the game will be broadcast on ESPN.

Tonight, there are a few things that are going to be taking place, the Parade downtown, Morgantown High will be playing Parkersburg South in their home coming and the WVU Men's Basketball team will have their first official practice of the season tonight between 9-9:30, depending on when the Volleyball match finished up.

This will be the start of John Beilein's fifth season as the WVU
men's basketball coach and this should be an interesting season. When
he first arrived here he had a big rebuilding job and was named head
coach after letter of intent day, so he had his work cut out for him.

Over the past two seasons the Mountaineers have managed an Elite 8 and Sweet 16 appearances. Quite remarkable group of guys that we have had here
over the past four season.

Now, comes the new group. A new cast of players to replace the magical group that has just graduated. In this group, there is one name that will stand out and that will be Johnnie West. I don't know what he will accomplish on the court, but he is the son of the NBA Logo and formerWVU All-American Jerry West.

I'm not sure what I will be getting into tonight yet, but there are plenty of things to do that is for sure.

Wild Kingdom

Deers, Turkeys, squirrels, birds etc. This is what I saw when I opened my front door this morning. I think they should be named honeysuckle and butterball.

Mountaineer Magazine

Make sure you take out some time this weekend and watch Mountaineer Magazine, they are going to do a segment on Mark Devault's Website. I'm not sure which one of them they are going to focus on (I wonder who produced it), but being that it is football season I'm going to guess they are going to address the Football portion of the site.



This Week: Kelein Dykes

Junior defensive tackle Kelein Dykes has been one of West Virginia's most consistent performers up front in a defense that has ranked among the Big East's best the past two seasons. Be sure to catch his story this weekend on Mountaineer Magazine.

More Magazine
# Sixty years with veteran reporter Mickey Furfari
# Mississippi State highlights
# Syracuse scouting report
# Big East Report
# Mark DeVault web site
# WVU coach Rich Rodriguez

Tune it and see what they have had to say about him, he has put a lot of work into these very unique databases.

The best bread in the world

Tonight, I took some movies and pictures up to Val. She was looking for anyone who would happen to have any of her wedding pictures. I guess she really has none of them and is looking for anyone who might.

On my way back I stopped by Jean's and started talking to her about food obviously. My conversation kept going to Daily Kneads and after you talk about it so long you just have to follow through with something.

I stopped by and picked up a Walnut Wheat and a Blue Cheese Multi-grain and took them up to them.

I think Daily Kneads has a few more customers. If you have never tried it, stop by and get yourself a loaf. It has to be eaten to be appreciated.

Back to work.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's off to work we go. Yeah, I know everyone hates Monday's and getting back to work including me. However you have to get through it to see another weekend.

Not much happened with me this past weekend, it was kind of boring. The Steelers played again on prime time last night, but they ended up losing their 3rd straight game and their record dropped to 1-3 on the season. I guess Big Ben's off season accident and emergency surgery just before the season has had an impact on this years team. sigh

Pam mentioned everyone needs to take a group trip to the IHOP sometime soon. Get everyone together and everyone meet one morning for breakfast. She said Gary came up with the idea for this past weekend, but it never came to fruition. Sounds like a good idea though.

Alright enough stalling, Hi Ho Hi Ho....

All Kinds of Wildlife up here

As many of you know I live up here on Scott Avenue. I seems like every morning I wake up and go and get a newspaper I open the door and there is a small herd of deer eating acorns from one of the many oak trees that are planted around me. I can always see them right before daybreak and right after sundown.

Now I've seen a flock of about a dozen very good sized wild turkeys that are now getting brave enough to come and get the acorns. It does provide a nice aesthetic feeling every time you open your door.

This morning I am bringing in groceries and acorns were falling like a light rain. I look up and there's a couple dozen what appear to be Blue Jay's knocking them out of the tree.

I'm not complaining, I'm just reflecting on what the alternative could be. Looking gout at a concrete jungle of Detroit steel and Japanese plastic filled with people driving and creating an audible noise pollution. It's nice to be able to open the front door and have so many plants putting out fresh oxygen to just fill your dwelling with good clean air.

I guess my life has changed from ten years ago when I was working sixty hours a week in silicon filled foundry where oxygen never seemed to exist.


The richness I achieve comes from Nature, the source of my inspiration.--Claude Monet

Moke's new mailing address

Moke gave Pam a call this evening and gave her a new mailing address.

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

Weekend Tidbits.

* The Mountaineers play Mississippi State this afternoon, but the game is only available on cable pay per view for $29.99. I don't know what I will be doing for the game, probably listening to it on the radio.

* Kim went to the Springs Festival yesterday, Mom was going to go with her but I understand she had some scheduled rehab fro her knee.

* Jean is in Huntington this weekend with Mickey and Sheila for a reunion.

* Last night the Mountaineer Balloon festival finally managed to get Light Up Night started. The weather hasn't been too cooperative in the last couple of days. However it looks like they will be able to get a few launches off the ground, and with winds permitting it should be a very photo friendly day.

* I managed to find a streaming website that has A complete set of some TV cartoons and a few TV shows on demand.

* I am contemplating either moving my website or just getting another one at GoDaddy.com. This is where my Domain Name is registered, however my webspace is at Mountianeer Hosting. I think I am just going to register a new domain name and keep George-Hall.net as it is, but make it more of a business site to market myself and do a new site for fun fun and games. I have to have some sort of a game plan in place before I do this rather than just doing it from the hip.

* Val has posted that she is looking for any potential Wedding Pictures that anyone might have and she doesn't. If anyone took a camera and has a picture that she may not have, I'm sure she would love to see them.

* I did manage to win the Championship in our Fantasy Baseball League. I usually never make the playoffs against these guys, but I managed to make it into the sixth and final playoff spot and then managed to defeat all three opponents in the playoffs to win the league. Now if I can just get my Fantasy Football Team to follow the baseball teams lead....

Have a good weekend

Template Changes

After finally switching over yesterday to the new Blogger, I finally decided to play around a little bit with the template and give a little feedback. Previously if you wanted to change your template you had to go into the code and actually edit the code itself to make the BLOG appear how you wanted to look.

With the New Blogger there are a few features that I liked and was actually one of the reasons I stayed with the old Blogger and that was to maintain the integrity of all my posts. You will notice that there is a slight color change to the BLOG and some of the elements have changed to make it a little more user friendly on the space. The main thing I like and a big reason why I waited to switch my BLOG over is the was you can now navigate to previous posts. You can use the drop down menu to see the year, or then month of the previous post and it compacts it and lists the number of posts by each month.

I was a little surprised to see that I have in excess of 450 posts in my BLOG. I have tried to keep it as active as possible and interesting, and I think I have achieved my goal and been able to keep it both fresh and interesting to some extent.

The new Blogger allows the user to edit the template much easier. It's written in block code and has their own individual interface for each block. I know how to write HTML, but I welcome the change for those who are in the beginning stages of web design.

Switched Over

A month or so ago Blogger came up with a new blogger. Kim started using the new blogger right away, but I was hesitant in order to keep the entire BLOG in tact and migrate everything together.

Today I finally had the option of Migrating everything over to the new Blogger and have finished this process.

Mountaineer Balloon Festival

Tonight is the unofficial start of the Mountaineer Balloon Festival at Mylan Park. Nothing is really going to happen tonight other than they are going to open up the carnival portion tonight at 4:00. However tomorrow night is one event that I really want to go and see. It will be Light Up Night, that is after the sun goes down and they have a few balloons inflated, then they blow a whistle and everyone turns on the gas and lights up their balloons. It will be a great photo opportunity for any and all who want to go.

Over the next three days there will be six scheduled launches that if weather permitting will happen and just fill the sky with hot air balloons. This year there are forty-one balloons that are scheduled to be at the balloon festival. So, weather permitting it could be a very scenic view to watch for.