More Trip Photos

There are several trip photos on the Events page of the album. Click on "Arizona/Nevada". It is not complete, but there's more than 20 out there right now, so it's a good start.

Initial Trip Photos

Some trip photos have already started to appear in the album... more to come.

Ugh's the Word

We just got back from a marathon vacation that spanned five states over ten days and included such activities:

- Visit to the Grand Canyon
- Visit to the Hoover Dam
- Visit to Las Vegas (Caesar's Palace, Barbary Coast, MGM Grand, Mirage, and of course Circus Circus)
- A wedding
- Visit to Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix for an Arizona Diamondbacks game
- Visit to Tucson, Arizona to see relatives


Here's the trip summary:
Total miles - 2988
Round-trip travel time - 48.75 hours
VUE MPG - 23
Total Fuel Cost - $200
Digital pictures taken - 433 personal, 128 business

Needless to say, I am really really tired. Of driving in particular.



Travel stories and many many pictures will be posted to the appropriate places on this site as I have time to do so...

For now, stadium pics have been posted to the Picasa album.

Pastime's End

Last day of baseball games for the girls. They actually have one more game each on Thursday, but we have other obligations. Shelby got her team pictures back.

In addition to Shelby's t-ball photo, I added some older pictures -- from our trip to Philadelphia and New Jersey last summer -- to the Events section of the album.

Darby and Shelby both had games. Darby's team won, but I didn't see the end of Shelby's game to know if they won as I had to pass out snacks at the end of Darby's game. After the games we had to go to CiCi's for Shelby's end of season party.

Decent father's day. Some relatives came into town for a couple of days, so we pretty much just spent the day gathered and catching up. Put some decent photos from today in the album (click on Events, then Father's Day).

New Album Section

Added a new section to the Family Album for "Events" such as family trips and gatherings, etc. Many of the pictures will already be seen elsewhere in the album, but others are only in this area of the album.

Self Treachery

I spent many hours building a computer from scratch for my uncle at my father's request. Just on old PII 400/128MB/6.4GB with Win98SE, nothing fancy. When I was finally finished, I used the built-in Windows Backup to backup the entire system, just in case. Since this backup took up about a CDs worth of space when compressed, I then used a cross-over cable to get that data to another machine to burn to CD.

That turned out to be an error.

I had previously disabled the built-in ethernet port for reasons which I won't get into here, and (apparently) by re-enabling it to transfer the data, the system's connection profiles got all jacked up. I tried one last test dial-up before giving the go to box it up, and that failed. The thing persistenly dropped connections after negotiating them.

So you're thinking, "just restore that backup you made", right? Well, taking a full system backup from within Windows is NOT quite the same as imaging a machine for backup purposes. I did try a restore, but that jacked up as much as it corrected. Lesson: Full backup/restore good for data, bad for hardware profiles.

So after dinking with it for awhile (much of which turned out to be a waste of time), I removed the modem, disabled the ethernet card, removed all signs of networking (dial-up or otherwise) and started over with the modem. Once I got that working, I removed myself from the vicinity of that computer and told my dad to box it up.

Home Run Kid

Darby got an inside the park home run today during her baseball game. She had a very good game considering how long a day she had. Her summer camp went to Frontier City today and she was ready to collapse when I picked her up about an hour before the game. Maybe those chicken nuggets gave her the pep she needed.

Shelby also had a good game today, getting on base and scoring twice. Both teams won their games today. Actually, Shelby's team won twice. The first win was by forfeiture as the other team didn't have enough players.


AND... NO RAIN!

Both girls' games were cancelled today while they were in progress due to incoming storms.

Darby's team won their makeup game today, Shelby's did not.

Still a little sore from the weekend, but not too bad. VERY tired though.

Okay, Now I'm Complaining

As though the ~five miles of light bike riding I had done so far this weekend weren't enought, I had to throw in a little overkill. Today I rode around Lake Hefner, not once, but twice. That's 20 miles. I realize for serious bikers or biking commuters this is a small feat. But I'm just a casual biker, so I may have some regrets in the morning if I can't walk or feel my legs. After the first lap, which only took about an hour, I felt pretty good and it didn't seem too bad an undertaking. So I thought, hey, I'll do that again. After only about two miles I started having regrets. I did make it all the way around that second time, but my legs were burning... literally. Turns out my legs are sun-burnt, so they're burning on the inside and out.

Can't Complain

An excellent day. In many regards better than expected. We drove up to Tulsa to have a fun outdoor day with some friends. As it had rained all week, we were very worried about our plans being spoiled. However, the sun came out early and it stayed very nice all day. We went to the Tulsa Zoo, where we spent more than four hours, followed by ice cream at Braum's to cool down. Then we went bike riding at the Riverside trails, and played at the park.

Down to One Limb

Today was a team-building day at work, so it has been pretty active. 3-mile bike ride this morning at the pretty cool Tinker AFB trail, followed by BBQ lunch from the always excellent Rob's Ribber. Then we had three games of bowling. I played decently (218, 161, 198 -- I'm not that good, it was 9-pin no-tap), but my arm and fingers are about to fall off, probably following shortly after my legs from this mornings very non-flat bike ride. Lot's of fun, but I still have to finish the day...

Just added several makeup baseball games to the Calendar. These are to cover the recent rainouts.

Girls' games were cancelled again today due to weather. I'm a little tired of the rain. It can be done with any time now.

Everyone Else Is Doing It...

Yes, I know, that's a Cranberries album title, but it fits.

This is a little tacky, but I added a link to the kids page allowing people to donate to the girls' college fund via PayPal. I've seen so many of these darn "pay-off-my-debt" type sites (i.e. savekaryn.com and others) that I figured, why can't we have a "put-my-kids-though-college" type site. The girls already have a 529 College Savings Plan (and we participate heavily in Upromise), and the darn 529 brokerages haven't been smart enough to make it this easy (anyone listening?), so I figured I'd give it a shot. Others are probably doing it, though I didn't bother searching. Either way we'll see where it goes.

The girls' baseball games were cancelled today for weather reasons. An unexpected (and appreciated) period of calm at the end of a less than swell day.

Heard today that my high school band drill instructor passed away this weekend. Definitely a sad thing. He touched many hundreds if not thousands of lives in his tenure at Archbishop Ryan. He will be missed.

New Feature

Added a public web calendar to the site. Gets cumbersome to send out t-ball, baseball, soccer, and school performance schedules (as well as schedule changes) to family and friends. Now, they can just visit the site and check the calendar to see when the next t-ball or soccer game is, etc.