What does this mean?

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

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

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

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

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…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New novel by Chris

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

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

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

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!

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.

Last minute Coroners call

When my alarm clock was sounding I started to get up. I was tired, but I had to get to Pullman to go golfing with Ben. Ryan and Jen also were with us. On the first hole I teed off and hit the ball really high and about twenty feet down the green. Not a good start, but I always seem to do poorly on the first hole. My next shot flew into a tree. We did not see it bounce out. It was stuck in the tree somewhere. I could not find it and ended up dropping a ball. I got an eleven on the first hole. It did not get better after that. I was having a hard time keeping the ball doing what I wanted. A few holes I had a good drive. A couple times I was on the green in three and needed fifteen or twenty foot putts for par. I would usually three putt.

On one hole I spent three shots on the fairway of another hole. Finally losing my ball around the teebox. I had to do a drop, and with the bad hits, it still took me three shots to get the ball to the green which was only forty feet away.

After we were done golfing I went to Zeppoz and no one was there to play poker. It was before the opened. So I stopped by the fire station. I talked to Michael and Brian. Chuck was there and said John was going to stop by. Chuck got called to do a transfer. John came down and we played Halo Two. I was getting my butt kicked. I had never played before. After we played for about an hour or so we played cribbage. I lost at that. John had to get going, so we dealt a couple hands of Texas Hold’em. Then we both left.

I went back to Colfax and watched some TV. Around dinner time I went to Subway and brought it back to the jail. I hung out in control and operated the doors while Dale and Curtis did rounds and a booking. Then I got a phone call from Pullman Regional Hospital. A person had died. After getting some information, I confirmed with Pete we wanted to take jurisdiction. The call came in about seven o’clock pm. I was planning on going to bed at eight because I needed to be up at four am. So I figured that plan was shot.

I drove to Pullman and went to the hospital. Kimballs funeral home was there as well. I had called for them to meet me. I spoke with the family and with one of the people in on the operation. Kimball’s took the body back to the funeral home while I gathered everything I needed to from the hospital.

I went to the funeral home and did my body exam there and well as photographing the body. There was a question that we wanted to do an autopsy. So we put the body in refrigeration. Then I headed back to Colfax to get the report completed. I spoke with Pete a few times about everything I had. He asked me to call the hospital and put a hold on the blood draws. I called the hospital and had them do that.

I went to the SO and printed the pictures out as well as wrote up my report. Because I was going to be gone I wanted to get everything done. Dale came downstairs and we talked a little bit about car accidents and people who died in them.

By the time the report was done and turned in, I would not get much sleep, so I headed back to Renton. I filled my truck and hit the road. I was doing fine for a while, but I planned on stopping at a rest area along the way to nap. I got to the one on top of Vantage hill and I was able to press on. But when I got to the one outside of Cle Elum I decided to stop. I went to the bathroom and then took a hour long nap. I woke up and hit the road again. I got home and went upstairs and went to bed at six-thirty am. I set the alarm clock for eight am. I was in for a long sleep. NOT!

Working extra hard

Today was the code complete day for the VI’s I have been working on. The responses are coming through to my box, but there is still a problem. But with the responses coming back I was able to do some coding and then I also made some assumptions about some of the other code following through with the code that I read. I got some stored procedures completed. One had to be made from the ground up, because the one that existed did not work. I also got the UI to work the way I wanted, but due to the fact I had to get this stuff done, I was not able to leave until almost four o’clock pm. As it turned out we were given one more day for code complete. But it was nice to get it all done and working.

I drove to Pullman and when I got to town I was on call for the coroners office. I went into the jail and hung out there and helped out a little bit with some stuff. But I was not going to stay up too late because I was going golfing in the morning.

Softball practice at Woodland Park

I had practice after work today so I hung around the office until around six-thirty pm. I went to get some new stuff for softball. I replaced my longsleeve undershirt with a shortsleeve underarmor shirt. I also got a new pair of shorts to replace my ripped shorts. I got a pair of sliding shorts with a cup holder.

When I was getting ready for practice I realized I got the wrong size of the sliding shorts, but I forced them on. I will probably have to buy a new pair because those ones are too small and the cup rides too low. They were pretty uncomfortable.

Practice went pretty well. I did some work with the outfielders by throwing them popflys and having one outfielder backup the other outfielder.

Playing Umpire

At work today I finished up what I started yesterday. There was a question I got answered to know what way I needed to fix a stores procedure. It turns out I had it going correctly. But I love how I have to get from one value to another. I have the number of the loan application. From that I get the loan officer’s number. Then I use that to find the loan officers’ office. I use that number to find whether a certain value is a one or a zero. Depending on what it is, it will tell the system what E-mail we should send.

Jon asked if I could help him launch the boat. So I left work around three o’clock pm. We dropped the boat into Lake Washington. We cruised around for about ten minutes. Then we went back to Jon’s and had some dinner. Logan had a baseball game. He is in the first grade. They just got out of T-ball last year and now they have a machine pitch league this year. I was the base umpire.

I remember most of the things I had been taught. But I was dealing with first graders. So I was a little worried about how I should call things. Young kids seem to cry a lot. So in one inning there was a really close play at third base. When I was learning to be an umpire I was told that on the close calls you are loud and clear and I dropped the hammer and yelled “OUT!”. After the inning was over Jon came up to me. He held his heart and laughed. He said he thought that call would have caused the first grader to cry. I started to laugh. I guess that is because I am so evil.

After the game we went back to Jons. We had some ice cream and I hooked up the boat trailer to my truck and brought it to my moms house where I parked it by the shop. I went inside to watch CSI:NY.

During CSI I saw a commercial for Cold Case. I was thinking about how Cold Case uses popular music from the era when they do their flashbacks. It sort of goes along with that I wrote about earlier today.

Music and Memories

When I hear certain songs they take me back to a specific place and location in time. When I hear Cult of Personality by Living Colour I always get taken back to eighty-nine when I was driving down highway five-eighteen. I was heading towards four-oh-five going in to Tukwila. It was going to be the first day of my fire cadet training with the Tukwila Fire Department.

The song Battle of Evermore by Led Zeppelin remind me of driving my truck around the highlands after I got my license. I was cruising with friends and I had some Oreo cookies.

Then there is the song Ziggy Stardust by David Bowie. That takes me to ninety-three when I was living in Stephenson East. I was also doing a radio show. That was one of the song I would play and it just reminds me of my freshman year at college.

The Offspring’s song Smash takes me back to May of ninety-seven. I was in my apartment. The first time living on my own like that. I had all sorts of dishes my mom bought and I was washing all of them by hand. It was taking a long time. I did not have cable yet because I had just moved in. I just got Smash, the Album, so I listened to that over and over and over while I was working.

An old one is Kenny Rogers’ Coward of the County. I was in day care at Busy Bee. The lady who drove us to Apollo everyday asked to borrow my record. It was a single with that song on it. I handed it to her one day getting into the van. I remember her putting the record in the pocket of her vest. I remember when I got it back there was a scratch on it and I was very sad about that.

It is strange how certain songs can take you to a very specific place in time and how for some reason those events get tied in your mind to that event.

Rocking on

I got the newest VI that was issued to me to the point where I am with the other VI. Waiting for help from the outside company. I got the stored procedures completed and the UI completed and working correctly. Now I just need to wait to get responses to do the final part of it.

As I was looking through the code the real fix was actually coded into the application and I see it all over the place where I did my stuff. The problem is that is was not completed and turned on. Most of it is there though. It reminds me of the movie Total Recall where the reactor on Mars was built and never turned on. It is like that in the code many times I find things that were built several years ago, but never turned on.

After I was done I headed home and looked for more people to go golfing with Ben and me on Saturday. I did not do a whole bunch at home. I got the picture loaded for the main page on the Nadirs Website. I also fixed the physical address on Joe’s Website.

I watched some TV including a rerun of House that I had not seen before. I chatted with Kristine on the phone. She will be moving into my house pretty soon. We are going to exchange work for rent for a while. I need some painting done and she will do that.

Murder victim’s 911 call was a prank?

So there is a story about a man names David Steeves. He was nineteen years old. He was in the trunk of his mom’s car when he called Nine-One-One in Elgin, Ill. They asked him where he was but he said he did not know he was in the trunk of a car. He at one point said “Oh my God, you gotta please help me. Please help me. Oh my God, Please help me. God.” He knew he was on South Street. The police spent about ten minutes and the chalked this up as a prank call.

About six days later he had not been seen until they found him shot to death in the trunk of his mom’s car.

Sounds like a horrible and sad ending to such a young life. Then you learn more about it. He was in a drug deal and the dealers decided to throw him in the trunk, rob him, and kill him.

Another case of criminal on criminal crime. Those kind of crimes that makes me just think to myself that maybe if he wasn’t doing drugs he would not be dead right now. It is the kind of thing that makes you shrug your shoulders and move on with life.

Now, that the deed has been done, I hope that the murders get the death penalty. That would take care of three criminals. One has been taken care of, and the rope will take care of the other ones.

I seem like I don’t care about criminals, huh? Well, you’re right. Like Charlie Daniels said “Take a big tall tree and a short piece of rope. Hang ’em up high and let ’em swing ’till the sun goes down.”

Welcome back at work

Today is my first day back at work since working from Pullman from Tuesday to Thursday. I was surprised when I went in and saw my cube was slightly rearranged.

I am pretty sure I did not leave my office with my chair upside down and the papers everywhere. There was coasters everywhere and several of my items were labeled “my marky board”, “fone”, “my drinkies”, and “typewriter”. It was pretty funny. On my white board someone wrote:
Todo List:
Clean up Coasters
Pick up Tape
Repair curtain
Fix Chair
Find hidden doggie dodo

We had a company meeting and were told why an employee was abruptly fired. We had some donuts and talked about a few other company news items. I spent the rest of the day looking busy.

I got all my photos removed from my camera and I wanted to edit them by my computer crashes every time I open a folder with large pictures in it. I don’t know why. It has been this way for a while. Finally I gave up trying. I went home around six o’clock pm.

At home I got the Nadirs website updated and posted online. I also spent a few hours gathering pictures of the players through out the history of the team to post them on the site. I got a little over half of the people taken care of. I may have a few other pictures that need to be scanned in. I don’t think I will find them for everyone. Some people I have no way of contacting. I will spend the next few weeks attempting to contact everyone I can.

Week two for ECSA Softball

What a day for softball! I got up this morning and I was tired, but I pushed forth. I got in my truck and whisked myself away to Renton. When I got home I got ready for softball and headed to Sea-Tac. I had three games today and I wanted to have some fun. The sun was shining and I would be able to use my Synergy II.

I hit the road and cruised home. I was a little on the tired side. When I got home I changed into my softball uniform and headed to SeaTac. I was early so I hung out and watched some of the other games. Then the rest of the team started to arrive and we did some work outs as a team. The coach wanted us all to do stuff together today.

After warming up we had our first game. I was hitting the ball really well today. I only made one out today and that was in the third game. In the first game I crushed one. It felt so smooth going off the bat. It was an inside the park homerun. We won that game. I played on firstbase and then I pitched two innings. The second game we were worried about the team manager challenging me so I toned down the hitting and got a lot of singles in that game. We again won it.

We had an hour break. So I took the time to lay down and rest. One of the guys on the team brought some chicken for everyone. I had a couple pieces and then we went to get ready for our last game. In my first at bat I had another inside the park homerun. It was all the way to the fence, after the bounce and roll, on a three-hundred-and-fifteen foot fence. It was this game where I made an error at first base that allowed the inning to extend longer. The other team was winning going into the last inning. We were at the bottom of the batting order.

The guys started to hit and we strung a lot of hits together. We had two outs and I was on-deck. I was hoping for one more hit. But instead the guy who was hitting third got a great hit and two people scored. That was the game winning hit. So I did not get my last at bat. It seems like I have been on-deck for either the last out of the game or the game winning hit. We are now five and one on the season and are tied for first place in the league.

After the games I went home and had dinner. Then I hung out the rest of the night. I was tired so I was sleeping by midnight.

Nadirs’ Post Season Party

I had two events planned for today. One was the post-season softball party for the Nadirs and the other was being the PA for the Thunder. The morning started off with a couple phone calls. Then at ten am I got up and started to get ready for the party. We were meeting at Zeppoz at noon.

I got up and got all my stuff for the football game and the post-season party gathered and ready to go. I went to Zeppoz a little early to make sure we could get a big table. When I got up there it was empty. I was about fifteen minutes early.

Soon the others started to filter in. I had some pizza and finger steaks ready to eat. I also had three pitchers of beer and some pop. As more people get there the food and beer quickly disappeared. So I ordered some more with the remainder of the money. I got some photos of the rookies as well as the guys who will be leaving the team after graduation.

Rookies: Trent, Dave, Jory, Ryan R

Retiring: Richard, Trent, Aaron

I announced the award winners as well as the new team records that were set. This season, records were tied, none were broken.

I had a few beers with the rest of the team. I also met one person who will probably play with us next season. He came along to hang out as well.

When the party was over, about two hours later I headed to Moscow for the football game. I met with the Yakima Manager to get the pronunciation for some of the players taken care of. I also learned about some new Thunder players. I pulled out my laptop and found I left the power cable at home. Luckily I had extra batteries.

I got the text files updated. I got the PA room opened and set up in there. I saw that Wally, from last years team was at the game. I went down to the seats to see him. I was David come in. He is the barefoot kicker for the team. He was limping. He hurt himself in a rugby game earlier in the day, so he would not be able to play.

The game got going and in the middle of the first quarter my computer shut down. So I had to restart it. In the mean time I used the paper sheets to announce the game until the computer was running again. I put in a second battery in the DVD slot. But it did not make the battery life get better. I pulled it out and found that that battery was nearly dead. So I put in the other battery. That raised the battery life. I also turned down the contrast and closed the lid during the longer breaks to make it last as long as possible.

Yakima was undefeated going into this game and beat the Thunder pretty easily. We scored a few times, but not enough. The replacement kicker did not have the leg that David did, so Yakima had better ball position all the time.

After the game I gathered my stuff. I got some dinner and headed home. I met to go to bed earlier that I did, but I could not get myself to find the bedroom right away, I chose to watch some TV first.

Welcome back Haymon

Today started out with my last day of work for the week. I went into Pullman. Ryan and I met up for lunch at Pizza Pipeline.

After I got off work I went to Colfax. I hung out at the fire station for a while. I sorted through my change that I had on my night stand. I had more then one hundred bucks. I got it all rolled up.

I grabbed the pizza from Bulldog pizza near the meeting time for the Coroners meeting. I went to the Coroners office and saw Kris from District Court. We chatted for a few minutes. She asked how I like life and about my job. Pete arrived and I went inside just ahead of him and set the pizza in the office. I got some plates out and he asked where Patti was. Finally he called her house and found out she thought the meeting was on Saturday. So Pete and I met and ate pizza.

We talked about a few cases. I asked Pete his advice about my ankle and the pain I still get from it. He said I should go see Pennington about it.

After the meeting I went to the fire station. Carl was working with Dan to redo the computer. I hung out there for a few hours hoping that we would get a card game going. It turned out there was no game. I was planning on heading home and going to bed because I was getting tired.

Ryan called and said Haymon was in town. I knew he was coming, but I did not expect him until Sunday. He got in early. He said I should meet up with them. At first I was not going to go, then I decided to go. As I was heading to Pullman I remembered about the After-Party Nic was throwing. I was thinking about going there too.

I arrived at Rico’s. I saw Neil outside. I followed him inside but he was too far ahead of me. He went upstairs. Then into the bathroom. I thought at first they may have all been playing pool. So I sat outside the bathroom waiting for him. Haymon walked up the stairs then saw me. He got really big eyes and smiled big. He came over and said hello and gave me a handshake and a hug. After he went to the bathroom I followed him down stairs.

Haymon, Moe and a guy chat

I sat at a table with Ryan, Moe, Haymon, Neil, and a few other people for a while. Haymon was going to get a round a beer and asked if I wanted anything. I said a water. Then he gave me a look. So I said I would have a Coors Light. I drank that down and people were getting ready to head out. Our plan was to get someone from another bar and go play cards. The game would be Killer Uno. We were also going to get some beer from the store. Once outside of Rico’s I had them line-up for a photo-op.

We left to meet at the Coug. I went inside first. The others had not arrived yet. So I got a glass of beer and walked away from the crowd. I got bumped in the process and spilled beer all over my shirt. The I worked on drinking it while the other arrived. Ryan and I went outside. The Coug is a big-time Greek bar. It is all sorts of better-than-thou people that hang out there.

After one person was missing inside, Haymon, was a one-man search party to find the person. We got her and then headed to Shakers where the person we were looking for was located. We walked to Shakers, another Greek bar. When we went inside and I told Ryan to keep up with the others. He failed in doing so and we lost them through the crowd. Finally we made our way downstairs. They walked out to the dance floor. I did not want to push my way through the crowd so I waited near the stairs and the pool table. I saw Pete from WSU Fire there. He said hello to me. Ryan went to look for the others. He located them around the corner and they found the guy, Lars, that they were looking for.

While Ryan was gone I saw Jory from the softball team. He said hello and then asked if I was married. I told him I wasn’t. He said “great, let’s go pick up some chicks.” I laughed and he did too. Then I told Jory I needed to go meet up with my group of people. It was near closing time. Moe gave me half of his rum and Coke that he had. I drank that and we walked outside. I headed from my truck and they headed for the cars. We were going to go to Dissmore’s before they stopped serving alcohol.

We got down there in time. They got three half-racks of beer and I got something to eat. Moe rode with me to Waller. I dropped him off at Waller. Then I parked my truck by the hospital. I walked up to Waller and they said that Haymon remember he had a hotel room we could use to drink and play cards rather than sitting around in the Waller library.

Ryan has beer… In hand!

Neil with lots of beer.

We drove to the Holiday Inn and Haymon checked into his room. We walked up there and no one really drank any beer. In fact we never opened the brand new decks of Uno cards we purchased at Dissmores. Instead we spent the next two hours telling jokes and talking about some sex stuff. One girl was talking about what men and women like in terms of sex and how it changes with age.

Ryan is getting Frisky

Haymon demonstrates how to get a promotion.

Then Neil said something about Russell being gay. I played stupid and Ryan and I kept making them feel dumb because they would show some of the “evidence” that Russell was gay and we would give an example of someone else doing that thing and asking if that person was gay as well. That went on for a while. We laughed so hard that my kidneys felt like they had been used as a punching bag for the evening. I took some pictures and videos while in the room.

We put beer around Haymon.
He woke up just as I took this pic.

Around four o’clock AM Haymon was pretty much out. The others were starting to fade. So, we all left. We walked to the cars. As Ryan was talking to me we was not watching where he was walking and bashed his knee into the hitch on my truck. I was laughing hard about that as well. It was a fun night and to think I was ready to go home at ten o’clock PM.