Sad News

We received word via email today that Phil’s daughter died last night as a result of an automobile accident last Saturday.  She was 17 and a senior.  Our prayers go out to Phil and his family.

Disaster (almost)

I was cleaning up PLUM tonight and deleted two files full of PHP.  The Calendar stopped working and I gulped a big time.  What did I do now?  a quick search in the webpage revealed a “require” for a PHP file that I deleted.  Removed the reference and problem solved.  Whew!

Working on a website for a couple in Germany, I was re-introduced to Paint Shop Pro (man I loved those guys before they became Corel).  Not really PSP but the bundled software Animation Shop 3 (Corel now sells this as a separate $40 box).  Anyway I generated a few animations for them to see what they preferred.  It was fun!  I forgot all about animations.  Couple that with Adobe Flash and I forgot about gif’s.  Now I get to play again – trouble is it takes way too much time to generate a several page animation.

Had stuffed veggie grape leaves tonight with a Greek Salad for $8.  I do not think I will return as it is too expensive for what you get.  I Detroit the same food is double what you get here.

Romans 1-16

On the way from PL to GR I listened to Romans 1-16.  It uses simple language in a complicated way.  I am not sure I like to concentrate that hard while driving.  Some things are pretty clear about what are sinful acts and included in the set are the basic 10 commandments.  Saul of Tarsus took his share of knocks and I would not liked to be in his sandals.

Work today was slow and I told the boss I needed something to do.  Hopefully he will scare something up in the next week or I will be furloughed.  I was sort of hoping to go to the end of April or even June but it might not be possible.

Tonight it was dinner at Russ and then B&N until 0830.  I ate a peanut butter cookie at B&N with tall decaf and I still have an acid stomach.  I cruised through a book on paddling Michigan rivers:  you could spend many years paddling most of the rivers.  I’ll try picking it up on Amazon.

Hope I sleep good tonight as this weekend was not a fun one with some tough decisions to be made.  One does not do well with lack of sleep and trying to think clearly.

Working on a website

I have been working on www.plumchurch.org for several years now.  It was , in fact, my first website I ever wrote.  It looks like it too.  I expected a lot of comments from the parishioners but that never came in and the site did not go much of anywhere.  It resided on my personal server.

 A couple of months ago I needed a new home for the pages and with the help of a generous donor and new site was born.  Same pages but different site that had a fixed IP.  The new site allowed me to ditch dns2go which was costing $100/year for virtually nothing.

Now the new site has a WordPress Blog and a Google Calendar.  These changes were necessitated by the demise of the all the Perl code I had in place for the blog and
Calendar.  I like the Calendar function from Google.  It is free and complete.  The only rub is that you have to have a Google email address – one of those gmail things.  Gmail is great too because I can use it with my Outlook mail client without going to the Google web page.  You may be able to do the same thing with Yahoo but I never get any mail there.

Go check out the new Calendar and Blog.  Maybe we will work on the purple colors later but for now Royal Purple is the background – you must know the Purple Robe significance so Purple stays.

Detroit

I just looked and it has been some time since I wrote a blogline.  I am in Detroit for and early morning meeting and since they were forecasting snow I did not feel like getting up at 0400 and driving through lots of snow and icy roads.  The trip back tomorrow appears like it will be a real joy.

Last Saturday Barry & I went out on the Fawn River kayaking.  We fought the current upstream for about 2 miles (2 hours) and stopped to talk and bask in the rare sunshine.  We decided enough was enough and turned around.  We were back in no time at all.  My boat is a short and wide recreational kayak – read entry level – but Barry’s is 14′ and only 24″ or so wide.  Besides being an expert kayaker his boat goes much faster than mine.

Sunday I was hurting from the strenuous exercise so out came the ibuprofen and I rested a lot after church.  Later in the day we got out for a short time to go to the church supper.  SAM wanted to stay but I had to pack and finish the clothes for the morning run to GR.

We have not been back to the boat and will not go this weekend coming up either.  This weekend the Dayton crew is coming up and Martha too. I will entertain as SAM has a church retreat.

Andy promises an early spring so I have to get the boat bottom painted and the stop cable installed.  I had Tower change the filters and install a shutoff valve for the diesel tank.  The shutoff will make me feel safer.  This year I want to kayak the Kalamazoo River at least 5 miles upstream from where we are with the new kayak I am looking for.

Lake Effect Snow

There was a blzzard of lake effect snow today and it was not anywhere near the 51 degrees of a couple of days ago.  This morning there was about an inch of the very light fluffy stuff on the truck and of course no matter how slowly you open the door the fluffy stuff flies into the vehicle and all over the seat.

 My work has been pretty slow and I expect the hammer to fall if it does not pick up pretty soon.  There are a few options to extend the agony but in the end $ earned fall to next to nothing pretty rapidly.

I went to Braun’s tonight and then on to B&N but I only read some more of a kayaking book.  I am fascinated by the Eskimo roll and how it is performed.  I am wondering if I have enough hip snap left to perform the roll.  The other thing I wonder is how to avoid losing my glasses when I roll over.  Fred had a clever idea that he uses on his skidoo’s.  He puts on a good neck band and then takes a carabiner of small size and clips it to the life vest and the neck band.  It would work but it does not seem too secure to me.  I guess I can try it but I’ll have to superglue the lens into the frames first.

51 degrees today

Can you believe it was 51 degrees today?  Well, it was and it rained and rained and rained.  Tonight snow, sleet & rain.  It will be a long drive tomorrow.

I went up on the roof today to get rid of the sticks dam that had formed in the valley.  While up there I picked up the larger size sticks that have fallen with each wind,rain,ice, and snow storms all winter.  I also walked down to the lake and there was ice half way up the beach 2″ thick – the water was really up high and still is higher than normal but the river volume and height gages show a steady decline with an upturn for todays rain. 

 Jess came home today and had a lot of interesting and funny stuff to tell about working in the big city.  We had a good long time talking all afternoon.  It looks like a trip to Denmark and training Brazil is coming up pretty soon.  We will have a whole new sequence of stories.

Late news

Jerry M called this am from FL and his boat.  He said his battery system has powered the boat overnight with no problem – this includes comfort heating on a 40  degree night and the hotwater system for the shower.  That takes a lot of power.

Later we went to the grocery store and had a lazy afternoon.  I scrapped some ice off the driveway for and hour so but it appears for naught since an ice storm will coat it again tonight.  If the forcast is right then tomorrow it will melt off with temps of 43 degrees.  All next week is cold with ice and snow.  Come on spring.

Stuck at the Excel Inn

Drat, the Excel Inn (now Super 8) offered me a rate I could not refuse.  Mind you, they said they were upgrading the breakfast and the high speed internet.  the price is $3 more than I paid before but then again a good breakfast would be worth it and so would the HSI.  We will see what happens.  The next nearest price was $45 but I would have to drive 15 miles round trip to work..  The Red Roof Inn, which is kind of shabby, was $37.99 and no breakfast.  I am happy with the results and have lived there for a long time.

Jess is supposed to come home this weekend and that will be nice.  We haven’t seen her since Christmas.  No, I take that back we went to her house once.  A marina is very nearby so maybe we can sail to see her come summer.

High Speed Internet vs Innflux

Innflux provides the service here at the hotel that just went from a nice private company to Super 8.  Innflux just plain s–ks.  Despite being just a few feet away from an access point I am in the low signal range.  It is just not me either it is everywhere.  I can pick up the Hilton 200 yds away better than inside this hotel.  For the Super 8 name they want to charge me 9$ more per day for nothing.