Down to the wire

May 31st, 2005

With these VIs needing to be completed and soon I did not waste much time working on them. Unfortunately I was not very successful in getting anywhere with things. I was thinking that once I figured out what one problem was with a field they would all fall into place. I was wrong.

It was more like a video game where each level is progressively harder. It seemed like each VI was harder than the one before it.

After working on it for most of the day I was getting no where. I asked Jon if he would be able to help me tomorrow if I should still be stuck. He said he would.

I went home and spent a while on G-Shack and talking to Zach on IM for a while. Zach just got accepted to West Point so he is pretty stoked about that. I went to be around three in the morning.

A few more EMS Calls

May 30th, 2005

I planned on doing nothing but watching TV and getting ready to head back to Seattle this evening. I got the boat cover removed do the things could dry. I also started to get packed up and cleaned the house. It is amazing how messy things get in just a few days.

I was watching Popularity Contest on CMT. They had a marathon going on. It is a show about people from big cities go to a small town in Texas and try to fit in. The townsfolk vote for the most popular one and the bottom of the list has to go home.

There was a ten-six-seven named Jason. Another guy dug up some dirt on him and he made it out to be worse that it was. He claimed Jason is gay and has a pornographic website (Jason’s Website http://barberatwins.com is not porn). When in fact Jason posed for a calendar without any nudity. He posed with his twin brother. There was no sex. I was mad the guy lied and then in the following episodes the townsfolk did not vote him off for being a huge liar.


Jason and Joseph Barbera

While watching the show’s final episode of the marathon a call came in looking for someone to do a transfer to Pullman Hopsital from Colfax. I volunteered to do it. Jim came in from home and Randy came from Albion to help out. We took the person to Pullman. I got to go code there. It made the trip better. After waiting for a few minutes we found we would be better off going back to Colfax because it would take a while for the procedure to be finished.

I went back home. I got the boat taken care of and moved it out of the way. I packed my truck. I watched a tiny bit more TV then decided to leave. As I was driving down Main Street the tones went off for a transfer from Pullman to Colfax. It was the same guy. We went there and I did code back to Colfax.

Then I got in my truck. Got some dinner, fueled up and headed home. Outside of Vantage near the rest area I was tired so I took a nap there for a little while. After a short sleep I got up and headed for home. I arrived at about four am and went to bed.

BOAT – Break Out Another Thousand…

May 29th, 2005

I got up and headed over to Moscow to get my boat. I called Kristine several times because she was going to come out and help me get the boat. But I could not get here. So I got the boat myself. Then I fueled it up. I talked to Loren on the phone as well as Nik. Then I went to Pullman and washed the boat. I picked up Loren and finally got a hold of Kristine. She was going to meet me down there with her new boyfriend and another friend of hers. Nik was going to meet me down there with his friend as well.

Loren and I went to Safeway and got lunch then headed down. I tired to start the boat, but it would not start up. It just kept turning over with nothing else. The battery did not last long before going dead.

I pulled the boat out of the water and we went down to Lewiston to look for a place to get a new battery. Nothing was open hardly. Finally we found a place and got a battery. I replaced it and we went back to the boat launch. I got the boat in the water but it would not start still. Kristine, Camron, and her friend got there. People were waiting to come in and I was blocking the way. I could not go to the other side of the dock because another boat was there. I tried to start it more. Then Kristine and Camron got into the water and swam my boat over to these other docks.

We tied it up and broke out the beer. We sat around talking and drinking some beer for a while. This other small boat came over and the people were older. We talked with them for a while and we told them about my boat. I went to show the guy what it was doing, and it tried to turn over once. I got happy and tried some more. I flooded it out. So I let it sit for a while. I got it started on my next set of tries. I yelled in excitement at the top of my lungs. We let it idle for a while and then took it out. The other said they would watch for us incase it died. We went out and cruised down to the damn and then to Granite point and then back and forth a few times. After a while Camron wanted to water ski, but the boat started to flood out and I could not get it to go at all. So I got Camron in the boat and it went okay from there. I decided to just do cruising. A few times we stopped so people could go in the water and do some swimming. I took some pictures of everyone swimming and having fun.


Kristine, Camron, and Loren

I could not see Nik at Granite Point where we were looking for him. We played on the water for a few hours then came in. Everyone helped get the boat ready to go. Loren and I went to his place. He cooked a steak for him and I. Then we went to see Madagascar. When it was over I took him to his place and headed home. I stayed up for a few more hours. I had a small pizza and watched some TV before going to bed.

A real barn burner!

May 28th, 2005

My alarm clock went off getting me ready to head for the barn burning. I got some breakfast and headed to the station. Clark, Carl, and a few others were there. Jim came down, so did Scott. We loaded up in a couple rigs and went about ten miles out of Colfax. We were going to burn down a barn that I always see and know I am close to Colfax. I did not want to see it go. So I took a lot of pictures of it before the fire.


Barn with Royal Blue Sky


Colfax Guys outside the Barn

Then it was started. From the outside I could see the flames working up the roof.


Fire going up Back Roof

I asked Carl if I could go to the door and get some pictures. He did not care. But when I turned around it was too late. The flames were already coming out the top of the barn, through an opening. It was too hot to go near it.


Too Hot to get Near Now

It was not long before it was fully involved. I started to take pictures as a couple crews manned the hosed and sprayed water on the wood. I am not sure why we were doing that, but I guess it was good practice for spraying water.


Fire Ball and Fire Streams

I was about fifty feet or so from the fire and it was so hot any exposed skin was getting hot. I took some more pics before Clark asked me to take over for him. I started to spray. I asked him to take some pictures with my camera. But after a minute or two my boots were getting really hot and burning the tops of my feet.

I kneeled down to try to protect them, but it was too late. I got relieved. I walked around this other barn where Clark was standing. I was going to get my camera. I saw one side of the barn was gone and I wanted to get a picture of it. You could see through it. It was really bright red and orange in there. It was really cool. After I walked around a rig to get to Clark, I asked him where the camera was. He said it was in the cab of one of the fire engines. He put it in there because the camera was getting so hot. However in the time it took me to walk around the engine the barn collapsed. So I missed my photo op and I missed the barn coming down.


The Barn is Gone

I took a few more pictures and helped to clean up. It got really muddy because of the water we were using. We went back to the station and loaded the engine with new hose and washed the mud off the hoses we used.

We stayed at the station for a while and played cards. Carl, Scott, Jim, and I were playing for about two hours. I ended up winning a few bucks. Then I headed to Lewiston for the Palouse Thunder football game. Janet had called and asked me to get her some PowerBall tickets. I stopped to get those. Then I went to Albertsons and got some lunch and chew. I got to the field and ate.

Then I made sure I had everyone’s name from the other team correct. I updated my text file. After the game started I found out all the number for the players were out of date. So I had everyone’s number wrong. I spent the rest of the first quarter trying to fix the numbers between plays. I did my best doing the announcing and running the music that I could under the circumstances. Jarrid and another guy did the stats, so I did not have to do that this week.

Walla Walla Stars pretty much dominated the game. One of their guys hit one thousand yards rushing on the season. We got blew out in the game. After the game I closed up the announcers booth and headed home. Tomorrow is boating!

Start of Memorial Weekend

May 27th, 2005

I got to work and started out right away on fixing the bugs. I was able to work on one document and get it ready to accept the next values and be able to tell if the return was a lock request or not. It mattered if the data would be editable or not. I was having a problem with one of the components after I finished working on it. When I would let the stuff run, it would not use my newest changes, but when I stepped through it, it worked fine. I figured that was due to the newest component dll was not getting used when it just runs. I did some stuff to make sure it would use the newest dll and that did not work. Finally I just rebooted and that did the trick.

I got my stuff cleaned up and checked it in. I waited for a new build to come out and none came after more than forty-five minutes. So I finally gave up and left. I got some gas and headed to Colfax. There were a lot of people leaving town so it took longer than normal to get through the pass and to go to Colfax.

When I got to town I called Kristine and she did not answer. I went to the fire station and hung out with Carl for a while. He told me about a barn burning tomorrow. I made plans to go to that.

Then a call came out in Endicott. We cruised out there. I took lead on patient care. We hooked a heart monitor and did vitals and the patient was doing well. I did the HEAR report and dropped her off at the hospital.

After the call I got the rest of the paperwork completed and then hung out a little while longer with Carl. Finally I went home and watched Varsity Blues with Paul Walker before going to bed.


Paul Walker

Things are less sucky now

May 26th, 2005

I started by spending nearly three hours from when I got to work stepping through the whole data flow process to figure everything out. I documented it. But after three hours one of the components crapped out and I could not go further until I started back up where I left off. I took a little bit of a break because of the long period of debugging.

I grabbed some lunch and went back to the debugging. I got more things figured out with it. So I started to see that some data that was getting passed to the component was not being taken out of the XML and rendered to keep going. So I fixed that. I contacted Jon about getting together once more and showing him what I have.

I went to his house around nine and we went to work. He said he could see why I hate working on this stuff. It is horrible. With his help I got a good idea of what happened when the data hits the component. I knew some stuff I could do to get some stuff fixed.

This sucks…

May 25th, 2005

Today I met up with Jon. We were going to go over the stuff and see what we could figure out. I was getting mad because he wasn’t doing anything to help and I did not know exactly what I was looking for. His Internet access died so I unhooked my stuff and got ready to leave. He said what I needed to do is follow the data from one page to the next. Figure out exactly what each page does with the data and how it is transformed.

Chugging along

May 24th, 2005

Today was more or less a waste of a day for me. I did not get anything additional figured out with the bugs.

I went home after I was done working and I watched House and a few other shows. Bill wanted me to come home early and help mow the lawn tomorrow, but I have to get this stuff done at work.

What does this mean?

May 23rd, 2005

I am now the official senior developer as Bin is now gone. I got an E-mail from Chris. He said “remember when I told you to get all the hard bug questions asked of Bin before she left? I hope you did it. You’re now the man.” I wasn’t quite sure how to take that E-mail.

I worked on figuring out the flow of the pricing pages. I got it documented. I did not get very far with the bug though. But I did determine that these are not really bugs. The stuff was never completed. So I am not fixing things that did not work correctly. I actually was finishing the programming off.

Mediocre day at the plate

May 22nd, 2005

Is it possible to have a bad day playing softball. I mean this like the saying “the worst day golfing is better than the best day working.” This morning I got up and headed back to Renton. I quickly got on my uniform and headed to the game. I did not get to bed when I should have and I was tired. We had three games. I was having a hard time hitting the ball. I hit it, but I was not making many basehits. We won, so that is the good that came out of the game.

We got our game done quickly so we had more than an hour and a half to wait until the next game. I sat by the field where our next game was going to be. I then tried to get a little sleep. But it was not very comfortable. I did get some rest, but no sleep. Then as our game time get close we went out there and played the Diamonds. They are an okay team. We battled with them and won. Then we went to the next game. It was not good at first. They took a lead and we were flat. The bottom of our order was keeping us in the game. Finally in one inning we broke it open and took a seven run lead. We held on to the lead as their first baseman got hurt. So rather than pulling an outfielder, they had the second baseman try to cover the whole area. That did not work out for them. We went on to win that game and we are still in second place in the league.

After the games I went home and got there just in time for dinner. I sat down and ate. Then I went to my room to watch TV and get some stuff done on the computer. I needed to build a couple CD’s for the football games. I put a few songs together so and cut some down so they would start where I wanted them to. I also got the National Anthem on it.

Thunder Football in Lewiston

May 21st, 2005

After getting to be around four in the morning I let myself sleep in to around noon. I got a call from Jerrid from the Evergreen Football League. He was going to go down and take stats for the football game. I was going to help him out. As it turns out Brian, the other stats guy is not here anymore. He was also the guy who played the music for the games. Jerrid was going to go down to the game with me. I arranged to pick him up from his house around two-thirty.

I got some lunch and went to the fire station. I talked to Carl for a little while then I helped him with an Access application he was working on. I was running a little late getting Jerrid. So I went to his place across town from the Fire Station.

We headed to the field. We got down there and I went into the press box. I found I would be the guy doing the music on top of the other things I was doing. So I threw in one of my CDs and let it play until game time. Then I got a couple CDs from the cheerleaders to play their songs during the game. I was happy to do the music because I wanted to start to use Kernkraft Four-Hundred by Zombie Nation as the song for the kickoffs. I was able to do that, but I had to be fast to switch from Thunderstruck on one CD to the other CD.

There was no National Anthem CD and I did not have a copy of it on CD in my truck we did the Pledge of Allegiance instead. I lead that.

I was also doing the offense stats for both teams on top of announcing. I was only able to do about fifty per-cent of the ads I normally do. When the game started I put in my first set of numbers and I found the Bulls’ names did not come up. I looked at my text file for them and found I did not have the numbers first. I had their position first. So it was not working. I had to open the file in Excel and switch the numbers and positions around. I also had to keep track of the stats while I was doing that. I just did not announce anything for a few plays while I got the stuff fixed. Finally I got that up and running.

The Thunder won the game forty to fifteen. The Bulls have not won a game all season. They just got a new head coach that is the winningest high school head coach in the state. They are hoping that will help them out.

Playing Kernkraft seems to be working out okay as well. People seem to clap along with it. I need to make a CD with that song along with all the other songs I need to play.

After the game Jerrid did the things he had to do. We hung out for a little bit at the field before heading back to Colfax. We got some dinner at McDonalds. I watched TV and it went from one show to the next until it was three in the morning. I was mad at myself because I had to get up really early in the morning to get to Seattle for the softball games.

Hanging out with Loren

May 20th, 2005

I spoke with Loren online today. He invited me over to hang out this evening when I get to Pullman. I am looking forward to that.

For lunch Julia, Lisa, Bin, and I went to the final Bin lunch. We went to Bin’s place of choice. It was okay. I am not a fan of the place we went because I am not a fan of Malaysian food, but I found something I was able to eat. During the lunch I talked to them about wanting to work from home more often.

Julia thinks that it is not something I will be able to do. They want the face time here. Lisa thinks there is no harm in trying for it. They all agreed that I should write up something and present it to Chris on Tuesday after the release is out.

I did not tell them that I have a job application in the pipeline at WSU as a backup. But it is important for me to spend more time there and to get back on the Pullman Fire Department.

After lunch we went back. I stayed at work until three o’clock before I hit the road. Because of the rain, heavy rain, falling it was slow going until the pass. Things started to let up and I was able to increase my speed. I pulled into Colfax around seven o’clock. I called Loren and he told me where he lived.

I drove to his house and knocked on the door. He answered it. I was imagining him looking a little bit different. From his pictures that I have seen. Not saying anything bad, but just a different person than what was in my imagination.

We started out talking about this and that, nothing really heavy or anything. Then the co-owner of Cougster came over. His name is Bruce. Loren cooked some homemade pizza for us. We ate and talked about the new Wal-Mart. Bruce is against it, I am for allowing them to come in. Politically Loren is right of center where Bruce is left of center.

After a while Bruce had to head out. Loren and I continued to talk about a lot of stuff. We spoke about the military. What his plans are. Computers was a topics. We spoke about Cougster. We also talked about some political issues including stuff dealing with the police and with the riot and the Top of China incident. Plus we talked about what is it like to be bisexual.

It was interesting to hear things from his perspective. He said bisexuals usually are the ugly step-child of the gay rights people. Gay people get down on Bi’s over the feeling that they are only saying they are Bi so they will not have to make the big plunge of admitting to being gay. Straight people just don’t like it when guys have action with guys.

I was over at his place until about three o’clock in the morning.

Cancelled work session

May 19th, 2005

The plan for today was to work with Jon and see if my laptop would let us connect to my computer. But I have a feeling it is a problem with Jon’s network and not the computer itself.

Today was the second to last day with Bin working here. We had a meeting with LPX about the new changes to their stuff. It was a conference call. It was not overly helpful to me, but now it is over and I will have to make the changes to our stuff to work with the new standard.

When I was done working for the day I went home. I was watching CSI’s season finale when Jon called and asked if we could put off meeting until next Monday. I told him that we could.

When CSI was over I watched a little more TV before heading off to bed.

Twenty-Five Years ago today…

May 18th, 2005

Mt St Helens erupted killing fifty-seven people and covering the state and several others with lots of ash. It shut down cities and turned day into night.

I talked to Jon and he is going to help me with my bugs to see if he can get me going in the correct direction. I thought about talking to Chris about my working from home but I decided to hold off some more.

I met Mike, the guy who was on his bike in Vantage with his wife, who I gave a ride to Othello. We had lunch at Dixies BBQ. We sat outside and talked about work and the rest of his bike ride. He is a really nice guy.

I left work around six and headed home. We were going to have pizza then I would go to Jon’s. But as it turned out, mom thought I was going to be gone, so there was no pizza. I went to Janet’s to help Bill with removing the stove from her house. But he had it out in the garage already. He was ready to leave when I got there.

So I headed to Jon’s. I got some dinner on the way and we tried to remote desktop to my computer. But it was not working for some reason. I drove to the office and Ricky was still here. I asked him about it. He was able to remote desktop to it and I was able to as well. So I am not sure why it will not work for Jon. We tried a few more times when I was at his house. It did not work still.

We gave up on trying and I went home. I tried to remote desktop from there and it worked just fine. Without being able to remote desktop Jon will not be able to help me with this problem. That really sucks.

I watched some TV before spending time online chatting with Loren over at WSU.

My Box is working

May 17th, 2005

So with some work and the moon and sun in alignment my box started to work. I was pretty stoked about that, but it did not bring me closer to figuring out what the exact problem is. I am still lost with it. I stepped through it a few times and cannot figure out why things are not working correctly. The good thing is once I have it figured out most of the bugs should be pretty easy to fix.

We were supposed to have a meeting with some people from another company to talk about their changing of some XML we use. But that was delayed until Thursday.

I went home around six pm and had dinner. Then I watched some TV. I was supposed to get some work done for Joe, but I did not feel like digging into it so I did not get any done.

M’s vs Yankees

May 16th, 2005

This morning I got up and headed across the state to Bellevue to go to work. I decided I was going to talk to Chris about working from home. But I decided against it. I am sort of waiting until a good time. I wanted to get it done today so I could make plans.

I got to work and tried to get my box working. It was having the problems from the last week still. That is how I spent most of the day. It was pretty quiet.

A couple of the girls here who are pregnant made the company breakfast as a thank you for the baby shower from last week. So I had a nice breakfast.

I left around four-thirty pm to get to Jon’s house. We were going to watch the M’s play the Yankees. We got ready to go and headed out. It was slow going once we got across the bridge and it caused us to miss the first pitch. We got some food outside the stadium and then headed in.

In the seventh inning stretch they were showing different fans. They saw Justin and Logan and their foam fingers. They were up and moving around. They showed it on the big screen. Justin thought that was so great. He was giggling and laughing about it long after they took the camera off of us. Sele was pitching and doing okay. But he got pulled earlier than I was hoping and Putz allowed a grand slam. We then tried to play catch-up and did not score enough, losing the game.

When we were walking out of the game a lady walking the other way stopped and said to Justin and Logan that they looked like the boys she saw on the big screen. Justin smiled.

Bomb’s Away Tournament Day Two

May 15th, 2005

It was early and I was on my way to the field. I was tired but I got myself moving. We were going to play the Tax Dodgers first thing, followed by the Bulldogs if we won. But it was morning and we don’t do well in the morning. A couple guys from the team went to Shakers. It was the last night Shakers would be open as they had lost their lease.

Everyone showed up and people were trying to get going. We were all tired and lethargic. I was put at fifth in the batting order today. I had earned a spot higher because I had been hitting the ball well.

We went out there and we were flat. We could not get the bats going. At one point we had nine up and nine down. My first two at bats were outs. They were scoring runs on us as well. John was playing for the Tax Dodgers today because he had the day off from the fire department. One of their guys hit a screamer right back at me and it hit my glove and my gut. It sort of hurt, but was not too bad.

We cracked the scoreboard with a couple runs, but we were down by about six or seven runs. In the fifth inning we came roaring back and tied the game. Then it was a seesaw battle. We went up and they tied it. They were the home team. We ended up going to extra innings. In the eighth inning we did not score any runs. They had the meat of their order coming up. The first guy had hit a homerun already so I pitched around him sort of. I did not want to give him anything to hit. He got an infield hit and the play was thrown away. Dan got it off the fence, but he had advanced to second. The next guy was their number four hitter. I was really pitching around him. I did not give him anything at all to hit. So they had runners at first and second with two outs. John came to the plate. I was not going to let John we the one who beats me on a basehit. He ended up walking. So the bases are loaded with the guy who walks nearly every time he faces me. A walk and we lose the game. I had to pitch my very best. And that is what I did. I got him to hit and we made the out.

We went out in the top of the ninth and scored a couple runs. It was their turn. They went out there and we made some pretty quick outs to win the game. It was an amazing comeback. One of many we have had against the Tax Dodgers. So now we had a few hours before the next game. I took my truck and drove it to field two. I hung out and watched the games that were being played on the field before us. I hung out with the team and we had a good time.

As two o’clock was rolling around it was time to gear up for the game. I warmed up my arm with Mark and then we went out and started to play ball. This time we were the home team. They went out and scored five runs to start the first. That was a better showing than the ten they scored on us yesterday in the first. We came back with a couple. We were playing catch up most of the game and finally we took a pretty good lead late into the game. They changed pitchers and we pretty much stopped scoring as they continued to chip away at our lead. They took a lead. We could not catch up and lost by a couple runs. It sucked. But we took them to extra innings as well.

After the games I went to Colfax. I decided that I would stick around and go home tomorrow morning rather than tonight. So I hung around the house and watched House on the VCR followed by the normal Sunday night line up including the Simpsons, King of the Hill, Malcolm in the Middle, the Family Guy, and American Dad.

Bomb’s Away Tournament

May 14th, 2005

Today is day one of the tournament. We are playing all of our games in Moscow because of the rain and the condition of the Pullman fields. I got over there around eleven am. I started to warm up with some of the other people. I found out I would be pitching the whole thing because the other pitcher would not be there. That was cool because I would get a lot of play time that way.

While I was warming up Matt said “Hi Scott.” I was sort of surprised that he said that. After the IM game we played this spring he totally ignored me. I don’t know if he was being nice so he could use my bat, of if he was just being nice. But I said hello back and kept warming up.

I saw the line up. I was batting around eighth or ninth. I wanted to bat higher, but I figured I would have to earn it. So that is what I did. I went out in the first game and went two for three with powerful basehits. We were playing a team in our division, the Bulldogs. They were beating us. They were crushing us. A few people from the Tax Dodgers said that we should be able to beat they because they are not a good team.

After the first game we had a few hours for a break. Mark and I sat together and chatted with others from the team. He went and got some food. I gave him money to get food for me. As we sat there the sun and the brightness was getting old. I made my way to the shade for a while to not feel like my eyes were going to burn out.

Then it came time for game two. The new line up had me batting eighth. But the deal was that the second game would be the reverse, so I would be batting third. In the second game I had a couple doubles and hit the ball with a fair amount of power. We were playing a team that was supposed to be the next level above us. Phil hit two home runs, a three-run and a grand slam. We were with them the whole way. We went to the seventh inning and they were the home team. We had tied the score at twenty to twenty. We had just gotten a homerun, so that made it so they could hit another one. The tournament allowed three more homeruns than the other team. I knew the next few batters would all be swinging for the fence. The first guy comes to the plate and he swung away. As soon as it was hit, I knew it was gone. We lost on one long ball.

We had another game right after it. The dreaded Tax Dodgers. They are the rival team of My Office. As their pitcher, Frank, says it is not a season unless we play them at least seven or eight times. I always have a hard time against them because they will not swing at hardly anything. There is also an umpire, John, who is really tight on his strike zone. Couple the two together and I have a bad day. It started out like that. I was not getting the ball across the plate like I wanted to. They scored a couple runs. The batting order was turned upside down from the last game, so I was batting third.

My first at bat I saw they had the right fielder playing in and about ten feet from the line. They know where I like to hit too well. So I had to look somewhere else for a hit. I found an hole. I hit it hard. In the following innings I got more pitches across and we were getting outs. I came up with two guys on base looking for a hard hit, I hit it to center field where it flew out. It was a homerun. Then an inning or two later, I came up with the bases loaded and hit a grand slam to left field. I was hitting the ball well this tournament. We beat them sixteen to three.

After the game I went to field one where my truck was parked. I hung out with some of the other guys and watched the game play on field one. After that I talked with Randy from the Tax Dodgers. He is a really nice guy and we chat a lot. The Bomb Squad was going to play a game and it did not matter if they picked up a few guys. They only had seven, so they got Randy, Ben from My Office, and me to play with them.

They are an A league team. In the A league after the pitcher warms up you throw the ball around the horn. So I threw it down to the third baseman at the beginning of every inning. Those guys were hitting the ball hard. I did not do well at the plate. I did have a walk my first at bat. Then I flew out to left field and followed that up with a bad at bat. I was looking for something a little outside. The first two pitches were strikes. I was looking down getting reset. When I looked up the ball was almost to me and it was looking like a strike. They guy quick pitched me. So I swung as quick as I could. I missed the ball and the bat came around and hit me in the back of the head. I was mad.

Randy was playing first base. A left hander crushed a ball down the left field line and Randy made a play on it. He was on his knees and looked to toss it to the pitcher. But Gregg was standing on the mound still. The batter did not even leave the box. So we had a live play and everyone was just standing there. Finally the second baseman ran over and covered first for the out. I was laughing because it was funny to see no one move during a live play like that.

When the was done I went to Zeppoz. I was going to hang out for a while and see if Ryan would return my call. I was there for only a minute when he called. I sat there and talked for about five minutes then got some lunch from the drive-thru at Dairy Queen and headed to Ryan’s. We watched a few episodes of Third Watch that he had recorded.

I left his place after the last showing and went home. I had to be at the playfields at nine in the morning so I wanted to have as much sleep as I could get.

Friday the Thirteenth

May 13th, 2005

I was tired when my alarm clock was going off today. That is probably because I was up late at the EMS call. I went to the office and started my day trying to figure out how to get my box to work. I was having a hard time doing it. I got Ken to reboot my computer over in Bellevue. I hoped that it would reset some stuff, but it did not.

I went to the bank to get some cash to see the movie later on today. I stopped by Pullman Fire and talked with Heston about coming back. He said if I come back and I on the department. That totally made my day. I was so excited. Now I just need to get my work to allow me to do the same.

I contacted the College of Business and Economics about the application I am going to turn in. I faxed it over to them. Today was the last day they were being accepted. I hope to hear back from that. If Netupdate does not allow me to work from Pullman, then there would be a good chance of me taking the job. If they allow me to work from over there, then I can be in the driver seat and make demands about pay, etc, to see if they would go with it. Maybe I could ask for a membership to the Rec Center and for my parking permit to be paid for.

I was going to hang out with Ryan, but he was going to be on the phone with his girlfriend until eight o’clock pm. I did not want to sit around my office until then. So, I figured that I would go back to Colfax and work at the jail. I got some pizza from Bulldog and went in.

I ate and offered some pizza to the others. Then I went to booking to help out. There were three bookings to do. I assisted with two and did the last one. Over all it was pretty uneventful. I was getting ready to leave when the Sarge and I got into a conversation about Whitman County Murders. Then we went outside and I talked with Dale, Curtis, Mark, and the Sarge some more. We were out there for almost an hour before everyone decided to go home.

I got home and relaxed before finally going to bed.

EMS Call in Hooper

May 12th, 2005

I started with a visit to the dentist. He said things are looking good. There was a small chip on one of my back teeth. He wants me to come in so he can fix it. That will be a free visit. So that is nice.

From there I met Ryan at Rancho Viejo for lunch. I had a big taco salad. It was good. They put some peppers in it so I had to dig them out. But they had a lot of cheese and I liked that.

I went to the office and started to work on getting my NUSource rebuilt. I did a scorchedearth build. Then I deployed the project. It took a couple of hours to make it work because I was not getting help quickly when I needed it. When I finally got everything done I was getting an msxml4.dll Access Denied error. That really sucked. So I worked on that for a while but I was not able to resolve the problem. I spoke with John and we are going to see Robots tomorrow around four-thirty.

I left around five o’clock to go to the coroners meeting. On my way Pete asked me to stop and pick up the pizza from Bulldog. I got there and it was not going to be ready until five-fifty. They said to grab a pop if I wanted. When the pizza was done I went into the coroners office.

Pete and I started to eat the pizza waiting for Patti. When she did not show we made some calls and could not get a hold of her. So we did the meeting. I got coverage made up for the rest of next month. We went over some old pics talked about different causes of death. There was one of a WSU student who was accidently shot with a three-fifty-seven Ruger pistol. He was carrying it outside getting ready to leave school for the summer when the shooting happened. I was surprised that I had not heard about it. He said it was probably because everyone was gone for the summer already.

After the meeting I went home and watched CSI and started to watch Without a Trace. With about ten minutes to go in the show we were toned out for chest pains in Hooper. The call came in twenty minutes earlier, but there was no address or anything so we were not toned until they got a phone number. The bird was launched and we flew out there. To get to Hooper we actually take twenty-six into Adams county and then turn on a road that takes us back into Whitman County.

She was in a bed and breakfast there. There was a large grass area right in front so we set up a LZ right there for the bird. We started to work on her getting an IV going and had a hard time doing it. Finally the bird landed. We took her down stairs and they tried about five more times before finally getting an IV going. We got her to the bird. They loaded her up and took off. We drove back to Colfax. It was about a two hour call when it was all said and done.

While at the bed and breakfast one of the La Crosse EMTs asked me if I saw the haunted room? I asked what she was talking about. She said at the end of the hall one of the rooms had a guy who died in it. And now if you move something in the room he will move it back where it goes. I went do to the room and it was closed with a piece of tape on the door attached to the frame.

I went home and watched a little more TV before finally calling it a night. I turned my pager off and went to bed.

My Office Women’s Softball Game

May 11th, 2005

I got going in time to get to Moscow for my doctor’s appointment. I am getting my ankle looked at because of the pain. He did a few things then said he wanted another MRI. So I will be coming back to Moscow in the future to get an MRI.

I went to get some pizza from Pizza Pipeline and headed into work. I am having some problems with my box. I am unable to get anything going becuase of the problems. I worked on getting them fixed for the majority of the day.

I went to the Bank to make a deposit for my business and to talk about getting a loan for getting the softball bats. I got some information and have a better idea what I will need to do to get a loan.

I went back to work and figured out things were not working correctly. I spent until around six-thirty trying to get it to work. I was working with Chris to make it happen. At one point Chris said Ricky was laughing at me. I was getting frusterated that things were not working and then being laughed at made me feel stupid. So I went to the WSU HR site and found a job that I thought I might apply to. Nothing was working correctly, so I finally gave up and headed to Moscow.

The My Office woman’s team was playing a game. I went to root them on. They only had nine at the game and people had to play out of position. They ended up losing a really well played game.

I went to Pullman grabbed some dinner and then headed to Colfax. I watched some TV and talked to Ryan on the phone before I went to bed.

Working from Pullman… again

May 10th, 2005

With my doctor’s appointment tomorrow I am going to work from Pullman from Wednesday to Friday. I also planned on getting back to Colfax for fire training. I went into work and we had our now weekly meeting today. We moved it up to one pm so I could get out of dodge.

The meeting was ooooh soooo fun. I got some more bugs put on to my plate. Then when it was over with I tried to get my box working. Between yesterday and today something stopped working correctly so I cannot work on the bugs I have right now.

I left around two o’clock to head to Colfax. I got into town and tried to set up my VCR to record House. I could not get it to work, but Ryan said he would do it for me. Then I went to the fire station. It was Board and Business today. So there was not much going on. When it was over I went to Subway and got some dinner.

I went back to the fire station. Jim, Carl, and I played poker until around eleven pm. It was a lot of fun. We laughed and joked about stuff. I ended up winning a couple bucks. My money bag is a little more full after those winnings.

I went home and watched some TV before calling it a night. I wanted to make sure I did not miss my doctors appointment.

Product and Pricing is mine

May 9th, 2005

With Bin leaving the Product and Pricing part of the website will now be updated by me. I figured that was going to be the case, but it became official today. I was given a couple bugs to work on. I started on the path of working on them, but I did not get a lot done on it today.

We had a company pizza party for lunch today. We all sat around the bullpen and ate.

At around four o’clock I went to the condo on Lake Washington that is forsale. It includes a boat slip. They want about two-hundred thousand for it. It has a small kitchen. The bedrooms are okay sized. The nice thing is the boat slip right there. It is not far from four-oh-five. I don’t think I am going to pursuit it too much though.

I went back to work and got a few more things looked at with the PnP stuff before I went home. We had dinner and then I watched some TV and did some computer stuff for Janders before I called it a night.

Happy Mother’s Day

May 8th, 2005

I got up this morning around nine o’clock AM. I was tired from lack of sleep. I got ready to go to the Eagles for breakfast. Jon and Janet were there with their families. Ricky came. Brian and his family also came. We were there for a couple hours eating and talking.

Then we went home. I sat around and relaxed until it was time to get ready to play some softball. I got my uniform on and headed to the field. I was worried that we would not be able to play, but the rain held off for us until the last part of the second game.

The first game we were playing the best team in the league. They are eight and oh up to now. We went out and scored a couple runs. They got seven on us and batted around. Then we went to work and played good defense. We held them scoreless from there on out. I had two hard hits that went between first and second base. In the top of the last inning we had the bases loaded. I crushed a ball deep to right field. I started to run. I got to third base and the coach sent me. He said you have to hurry. I got to home and I saw the catcher was ready to catch the ball. I slide in under the tag, but I got called out anyway. I got a small raspberry on my knee from the slide. But we scored enough runs to take the lead. We held them in the last inning and won the game. We were all happy about it.

Then we played the next game. The team fell apart. There was some bickering and it was ugly. We did not play good defense. I had two more hits. We lost by four runs. It was ugly.

I went home and got out of my uniform. I was tired and dinner was almost ready. I watched some of the Sunday night shows on FOX. I ate. Then I watched the Simpsons, Family Guy, and American Dad. I stayed up a little longer before finally deciding an early night to bed would not be all that bad.

Lots and lots of cars

May 7th, 2005

After going to bed at about four in the morning, I turned off my alarm clock and slept in. It felt great to do so. I was going to have to help mow the lawn today. So I was prepared to do that. Before I got going on that I made my mom a CD for Mother’s Day. It had a lot of her favorite songs on it.

Then I went downstairs. I got a call from Gary. We were talking about doing some golfing today. But we ended up going to Apollo and playing catch with Josh. After tossing the ball around we did some hitting. Gary and I each hit a homerun. Then I pitched Gary as baseball and beaned him. It brought us back to the old days when we use to play homerun derby up at Apollo. We would pitch to each other and I often would hit Gary with a pitch. After we all took a few turns hitting, we left.

I got some gas for the lawnmower and went home. I started with the weedeater. Bill got the riding mower and started with that. I went around the yard, but soon I ran out of string. I could not find any new string so I pulled out the push mower. But after about two minutes of using it the axel broken and a wheel fell off. I showed it to Bill. He showed me where more string was. I got it on the weedeater and finished off the yard. Then I used the leaf blower to clean off the driveway.

After I was done I took a shower and then sat around for a while. I watched some TV. I called Michelle up. I had not talked to her since I saw her at Chuck’s Donut Shop. I left a message. She called me around nine o’clock pm. We talked for almost two hours. We were catching up on the old times and what we had been doing since we last saw each other. She was married and had a kid. Then got divorced and moved back here. I wish I had known. I wish I had not thrown away my chance with her. She made me happy, only I did not know it at the time.

When I was done talking to her Dave called and we met at the Iron Horse casino in Auburn. We played four card poker. There was a guy who reminded me of Andy. He sort of looked like him and was just as annoying. He was always talking and looking over my shoulder. He would comment on how other people played their hands.

After more than an hour and a half Dave decided he had to leave. He was too tired. I played some fifty-dollar a hand black jack. I lost the rest of the money I had from playing four card poker. I took off and headed home myself.

I was out on SR-One-sixty-seven when I saw about five cars get on the freeway at one-eightieth. They all stayed together and got on to four-oh-five right behind me. I got off at the Maple Valley Highway and went past Stoneway. Where the old Bingo hall is there were about fifty cars in the parking lot. The were all rice burners like from last night. They were all emptying out as I was going by. There were probably about sixty or seventy in all.

This time they were heading east instead of west on the highway. It was again about two am. So this time I decided to follow them for a while. We went out to near Maple Valley and then turned onto some side road. We followed that road to Four Corners. Then back to Maple Valley where they got on SR-Eighteen. I broke off from there and went home. They got on SR-Eighteen about one block from where they turned off the Maple Valley Highway, but they went a long way round to get there. I have no idea where they were going to go from there. But I did not have much gas. We had also seen three cop cars, on the route they took. It was odd to see them where we did, so I was worried that something would happen sooner or later and I did not want to be involved.

I got home and started to get ready for bed. I read a little bit in my book from Chris and was on the net for a while. Then I got a phone call from Michelle. She asked me to see her at the end of my driveway. We talked for about another hour total. I finally got to bed at about four am.

Spending the weekend in Seattle

May 6th, 2005

With no need to work in Whitman County, I opted not to go out there this weekend. I was planning on relaxing in Renton. I was going to hit lunch with Mike, the guy who I have a ride from Vantage to Othello last week, but something came up. A couple guys and I went to Three Pigs to have lunch.

Overall work was pretty uneventful. I has softball practice after work, so I just hung around making more Internet recordings. Close to practice time I got ready and then headed across the I-Ninety bridge to Seattle. We were playing at the Raineer playfields. Practice went well. I hit the ball pretty well. I also spent time playing outfield. The coach had me start to work with people on throwing. Some people have never learned how to throw so they do not have much knowledge on throwing.

When practice was over I headed back home. I got some dinner and then watched TV for a while. I had plans on going out, but not until later on. Finally around eleven o’clock I decided now was good. I went to the bank and got some money and went to Diamond Lil’s. I did not get a hand to save my life. I played out a few hands but I would quickly find the cards were the opposite of what I needed to win.

One of my final hands I got a King and Queen of hearts. All low cards and no hearts came out. So I bought in for twenty bucks more. I lost that quickly as well. After less than an hour of playing, I decided I was not done. I went across the street to Freddie’s Club. I played twenty-five dollar a hand blackjack. I did well there. In fact I won two-hundred and fifty dollars.

So I went home with some happiness. On my way home I got to the Maple Valley Highway where it intersects with Four-oh-Five. About twenty rice-burners all got onto four-oh-five going South. I did see one American Muscle in there too. All the cars had several people in it. It was clear they were all together. I wondered where they were going. It was about two o’clock am and I can only assume they were going to race somewhere.

Girls are evil… here is the proof

May 6th, 2005

I got this for a guy I work with. It has been around, but it is pretty funny.

New novel by Chris

May 5th, 2005

A guy I work with wrote a novel, The Syndrome Rule, and it just was published. He brought in several copies for people who work here. I got one and he signed it for me. It is about an executive at a large software company in Redmond who is kidnapped. Her husband then has to find her. I am reading that between making recordings from the Internet with TotalRecorder.

I spent time posting and reading stuff on the shack as well. My mom headed over to Colfax to look at a property. I am not sure what she will find with it. But she is staying at my house while she does that. I contacted my real estate agent and put him in touch with her. I also called the county and have them aware she will probably stop by the assessors office so they can help her with what she needs.

I have been dealing with softball bat companies. I am working on being an authorized dealer for them. But I may not be able to do it. The office I have should be able to work for what I want to do, but they want minimum orders in the thousands. I don’t think I could move enough bats in a season, so it would be pretty expensive to do that. More than I probably can afford for now.

My pocket PC’s battery died and the backup battery sucks so I lost everything. But I had a backup for it. So I ran the back up. But when I did a sync with my desktop computer it removed all the new appointments I had set up. So I had to set up new appointments for all the football games and softball games as well as for being on call.

I left here around seven-thirty to go home. When I got there I watched some TV. My mom called just before dinner was ready. I talked to her a little bit. She went to the Eagles in Colfax and people did not recognize her. So she told them what she was doing. She mentioned the property she was looking at was near my place. One guy asked who her “son” was. She said who I was. He said, I know him. He is my jailer. It turns out it was a guy named Bruce. He is not someone I would worry about knowing. I was thinking it was someone else she was talking to and I would not want him to know where I live, but like I was saying I do not worry about Bruce.

After dinner I watched some more TV and then cleaned the dishes from dinner. I got on the computer a little bit and copied my new Internet recordings to my external hard drive. Then I headed off to bed.

DotNet Talk

May 4th, 2005

At work today I overheard Ricky talking about his boss who used an application called TotalRecorder to record broadcasts and whatnot from the Internet. So I looked it up. It was thirty bucks for the pro version. I bought it and started to record stuff from the Internet. It is very cool.

Several of us went out for pizza. While there we talked about Bin. There is a rumor that she is going to go to work for Costco. I called up Brian, and it sounds like that will be the case. We spent the rest of the lunch talking about benefits and different work environments.

I went back and did more recordings before the DotNet lecture that some of us were going to go to. It was being held at Microsoft and sponsored by the DotNet User Group. There was some really good information in it. One of the biggest was showing the new technology that we will use in C# called generics.

At the end of the talk they gave away some books. I won a copy of the C# Programmers Cookbook. It is a fifty dollar Microsoft press book. Ricky also got one. Ken got a different book. So all the people from NetUpdate got something.

I went home and watched some TV and just relaxed before deciding to go to bed.

Writer’s subject covers his death

May 3rd, 2005

While reading through the Urban Legends Website I came across one about a person who wrote about not wearing seatbelts, and then dying in a car accident because he was not wearing a seatbelt.


Derek Kieper, 21

I looked into it a little bit more. His name was Derek Kieper, 21. He was a junior at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He has a Four-Point-Oh grade point average. He had five majors: Economics, history, sociology, psychology, and political science. He wrote for the school newspaper, the Daily Nebraskan. He was right of center on political issues and sounds like pretty outspoken on campus.

On September Seventeenth of ought-four he published an opinion piece titled “Individual rights buckle under seat belt laws

In the opinion piece he wrote, in part: (The full text can be found at The Daily Nebraskan)
I’m from the school of thought where everyone should have the right to do as they please as long as they are not infringing on the rights of other people. This comes from the political philosophy that inspired our founders and freedoms.

The duty of government is nothing more than to make sure everyone’s rights are protected and not infringed upon. Uncle Sam is not here to regulate every facet of life no matter the consequences.

No law, or set of laws, has made the government more intrusive and ridiculous than seat belt legislation. Nothing is a bigger affront to the ideas of freedom, liberty, yada, yada, yada. Whether you are a pinko liberal or a right-wing whack job, there are plenty of reasons for just saying to hell with seat belt laws.

As laws become increasingly strict for seat belts, fewer people will respond positively by buckling up in response to the laws. There seems to be a die-hard group of non-wearers out there who simply do not wish to buckle up no matter what the government does. I belong to this group.

What frightens me more about safety belt laws is the intrusion they represent to Americans. Democrats should take notice. Choice is an important aspect of freedom – choice to do as I see fit with my body and being.

Yet, the government has decided that I do not have the choice to drive around without my seat belt. And if I want to be the jerk that flirts with death and rides around with my seat belt off, I should be able to do that, too.

He included stuff about the tax money that was being used make this law happen, and stuff about states’ rights. I mainly focused on his personal choice issues as written. I know it is good to wear a seat belt and that it will save lives. Many of the deaths due to lack of seatbelts come from bodies hitting the windshield and others come from being partially ejected and then the car lands on top of you. Some others come from being thrown free and sailing head first into a rock or a tree or a telephone poll or another car or something else.

I usually wear a seatbelt. The only time I leave it off is when I go from the store to my house on the backroad where I am the only one driving. But, the point is should the government FORCE people to wear seatbelts. As Aaron, my old neighbor said, “what if that my way of seeking thrills? Some people bungee jump, I don’t wear a seatbelt.” It is not the job of the government to save people from themselves. That was never a function of government, nor should it be.

So, I agree with Derek that it should be personal freedom to wear or not to wear. I choose to wear. He chooses not to wear.

On January fourth of ought-five Derek was riding in a Ford Explorer with two friends. They were buckled up, he wasn’t.

It was about Three o’clock am when the Ford Explorer hit a spot of ice, skidded off Interstate Eighty just outside of Lincoln and rolled several times, throwing Derek out of the car. The other people in the car lived.

Pretty interesting.

Other than that, I am waiting to hear back whether my stuff will have any bugs or not. So I went home at the end of the day. We had pizza for dinner at home. I watched my TV shows before finding my way to bed.

Urban Legends

May 2nd, 2005

I was at snopes.com today checking out some of the urban legends they talk about on the site. It is an interesting site to read. I you can lose track of time on the site reading them as I did. It was six-thirty and I decided to get a hold of Jon. We were going to meet up and discuss the softball site I want to make. I have been wanting to do it for a long time and now I am getting close to making it a reality. When I got to Jon’s house Logan, Justin, and I played some games while Jon watched the rest of Star Wars.

Then we talked about the data model we want to use. It is going to be pretty complex. After we talked about it a little bit and Jon had an idea what I wanted I took off and went home. When I got there I heated up my dinner and then watched TV.

I was a little tired still from this morning because I still was woken up early because I forgot to turn off my alarm clock. But let is getting back to normal.

The Family Guy is BACK!

May 1st, 2005

With the alarm clock blasting only ninety minutes after I went to sleep, I hit the off button. Then about thirty minutes later I realized I should be up already. So I jumped out of bed. Got ready. Put my uniform on and ran out the door. I still got to the field only about ten minutes late. But I was a little on the tired side.

As we got ready for the first game we were throwing the ball. It was warm and very humid. I was uncomfortable. Then we played our first game. I had an inside the park homerun. It was fun. I played first base. Then we had a second game right away. I hit the ball well again and played first base and did some pitching.

We won both games. So we are now seven and one on the season with one more game today. We had almost a two hour break. So I went to the store and got a small sub sandwich. I hung out in my truck a little bit and let the AC cool me down.

When I went back to where everyone else was I tried to sleep a little bit, but the best I was able to do was rest as little. Then we had to go warm up. After throwing the ball a little bit we went back to play. My first at bat the pitcher was throwing the ball about two feet over my head when the ball crossed the plate. So after ball three I swung the bat. And the umpire said “that was ball four, but he swung the bat, so STRIKE!” The next pitch almost hit me in the head. I had a walk. I was out of energy though. I was tired and just exhausted. By the middle of the game I worked on my PMA to get my head back into the game. I did not hit the ball well. I actually had two pop-ups after the walk. My last chance for a hit came in the last inning, but I knew what would happen. I would stand in the batters box and the last out would be made the by the guy in front of me. I was right. That always seems to happen.

In the second to last inning while I was at first base I made two good plays. One was a big stretch to get the out. The other one was a throw from third base. The ball was too high. I was going to jump up and get it, but I would have pulled my foot and the guy would have been safe because he was almost there. So I did a quazi-jump keeping my toe on the bag. I caught the ball with the upper part of my mitt. The team cheered for that play. I even had guys from another team who were waiting to come on the field compliment me on the play.

We ended up winning that final game to go to eight and one on the season. We were next going to head to Raphael’s house for a team get together. He has a really nice house south of Auburn. He cooked all sorts of Mexican dishes.

Everyone sat around and chatted and ate. After dinner I went outside and hung out with the dogs and played with them. Mark was out there with me. Then everyone went into his pool room where he also has a roulette table setup. A bunch of the people on the team played roulette and I watched and took some pictures.


Maulers gambling at Raphael’s

I left a little before seven o’clock. I wanted to get home so I could watch the Sunday night shows on Fox, including the return of the Family Guy. The Simpsons had two new episodes. There was also a new show called American Dad on. When the was over with I watched Gray’s Anatomy. But I fell asleep during that show. I was so tired I was just ready to sleep.