The Family

I can remember making minuature lego walkers (complete with four legs that you could move to ‘walk’) and wondering what it would take to actually build a real star-wars style AT-AT Walker. I figured I’d need a lot more parts that I wasn’t going to have, so I didn’t think about it much. I enjoyed my own walkers anyway.

I haven’t really thought about this much until I found out that lego has a Star Wars AT-AT kit. That actually walks; they motorized it. For only $130.

Oh for the want of just a little bit more space!

This weekend we went to the Tour de Fat; put up a page with pictures.

There are some links on the page to the newspaper article & event homepage; they explain it best. But, in summary, it was a bicycle parade with 4,000+ riders, a “bicycle carnival, a pedal-powered imaginative chaos of creativity”. Something New Belgium Brewery got started.

It was wild.

ps – for those coders out there, please excuse my makeshift code. It was late, I was handcoding, and I just wanted it all done fast.

So. Tomorrow is the big day.

Nervous, scared – not quite sure of what, but just that it’s surgery .. that I’ve never been ‘in surgery’ like this before. And I want them to find something, but on the other hand I don’t want them to find anything too serious .. some of their ‘comforting’ comments have being growing all out of proportion in my mind .. we all know how that goes.

I’ll let everyone know how it goes, though I won’t really know anything till the post-op appointment, which is another two weeks. But maybe it’ll be something obvious, and we’ll all know right away.

Anyway .. tomorrow noonish … send good thoughts ..

Chris & Christina

OK, we talked about this a while back, said I’d send photos & dimensions, so here they are.

Toy chest is 35.3″ wide, 25.5″ deep, and 18.75″ tall. Yes, it would be completely repainted and have Aleah’s name on the top.

Dresser is 46″ wide, 18″ deep (though I’d allow 20″ to account for the mirror supports), and 27/63.5″ tall (first is just the dresser, second is dresser and mirror). You can see on the side where parts of the veneer peeled; I have those and need to re-glue. But still, you can see it isn’t pristine. Fully broken in already. There is a glass shelf that goes across the middle; you can see it on the ground right now.

Pictures are at http://ramona.4101.org/furniture/. First three of toychest; next three of dresser, then one of the desk. Didn’t take dimensions of the desk – probably not something she’s ready for yet. But, Mom, if you wanted to put out word to the other extended Azbill cousins – Lisa’s sons have kids now; maybe they would be willing to take it. It has been repaired, but not refinished.

An interesting page found when stumbling

and following a link in that page, a whole interesting site for those who like words.

Aleah was born at exactly 12:30 as called by the doctor. He was actually suprised that it was exactly 12:30. Guess it doesn’t happen that often.

Don’t really have any major plans for today, birthday wise. We have a few things for her though, so she will get actual birthday presents on her birthday. Of course, at one year old, the whole birthday concept does not mean much.

The real ‘party’ for her is going to be this weekend. Both sets of grandparents are coming down and, weather permitting, we will be doing cooking on the grill and gifting of Aleah.

Personally I’m looking forward to some early bedtimes, as I’m sure Aleah will be skipping her daytime nap with so many people around.

OK, so .. here I am. Back at last. Have been on travel for almost an entire month.

Left CO on June 9th to support Kevin in the Assault on Mitchell, which was on June 11 (a Monday). He rode strong, but they pulled time on him just as he entered the park gates (1-2 miles left in a 100+ mile ride). I went rock climbing at Chimney Rock, much fun.

Spent time with Kevin’s aunt and then his cousin; Kevin returned to CO on Wednesday. I spent the rest of the week in SC visiting with friend Beth. Thus ends the first week.

The second week I spent working in the Raleigh office. It was much fun, picked up lots of work and ate at lots of restaurants I missed. Thus ends the second week.

Next was a yearly IT conference, which I attended for the first time. Very useful, very good stuff happened there. Was in Rochester, NY; the hotel had problems (bedbugs, mice, that sort of thing) but the conference was wonderful. On Thursday, we had a field trip to Niagara Falls (Canadian side – I’ve now been outside of the country). Flew back to CO late Friday. Thus ends the third week.

Was back in CO for four days. Did laundry, cleaned house as I could, worked Monday & Tuesday, we flew out Wednesday for Kevin’s family’s annual 4th get together. There were about 50 people in attendance this year. Kevin & I spent some time at an area state park, had the family picnic on Saturday, flew back Sunday. Thus ends the fourth week and the travel, for a time anyway.

That is the totally abbreviated version. Some unlabeled pictures are at http://ramona.4101.org. If anyone wants any further details about any of those trips, let me know. I’m always willing to talk more …

I have to post something so i can stop looking at “Earth vs the Spider” every time i check the board.

It is the 4th… it has been a pleasant day… rainy but pleasant. We birthday shopped for Aleah and ran several other shopping errands, including buying me another pair of thongs, black ones. I am so tired of the blue ones. I never intended to wear them and almost only them for so long. I wish i could find a pair of slip-on shoes (not thongs) that were comefortable… though not enough to go to every store or buy what i find in catalogs. I want it to be easy. 🙂

So… Ramona, post about your trip!!! I know you have had loads of free time since you got back… i mean it has been what… almost a whole week now? 🙂

Well… my goal was to have something besides the spider movie on top, so this should do it.

Happy 4th to all…..

I just watched Earth vs. the Spider (1958). It was a terrifying movie about a giant tarantula holed up in a cave just outside of town. What i found most interesting was the way the spider changed size. When it was dead and waiting in the high school for the people at the university to come pick it up to study, it was about twice as tall as a man (they had carried it thru a set of double doors to get it inside) but when it came to life (it had only been stunned!) it broke out and went walking down the street. Then it was taller than 2 story buildings.

The best acting or the best written role has to be the mother of the teenage heroine. Our heroine’s father was killed by the spider and his sucked-dry corpse was recovered. Our heroine is feeling guilty because he had been killed on his way home from buying her a present which she found and then carried into the spider’s lair where she lost it. She was weeping when her calm mother found her and sympathetically agreed that it was a shame that she had lost the bracelet, but told her that she should not feel guilty and should forget the bracelet. Then she reminded her that she did have homework due at school tomorrow. This is the same day their husband and father was killed by a giant spider. Later when her daughter is saved (just barely) from the spider, mom gives her a quick hug and then pullls her handkerchief out of her pocket and cleans the smudge from her daughter’s cheek.

Anyway, it was not “the” spider movie i remember from my childhood. I didn’t think it was, but it was worth a look.

One of the features of our software is the ability to generate documents with information pre-filled on a per-case basis.  Everything from name, address, fees, to… well, whatever we want can be stuffed into a document template and loaded into the system.

Basic documents are easy to do.  The system is build that all you need is a template (mix of text and template-tags for data) and a name for the document to work.  However, we sometimes need to do more fancy things like build document tables on the fly, leave fields open for editing, and make fields available as a drop-down list for the user to choose the option they want when printing.

That last feature is one I built.  Give the code a list of items you want to show up in the selection box and away it goes, happy as can be.

I haven’t really thought about the that bit of code till today, when I was thinking about how to explain things to any new developers.  How did I make that drop down code?   I created a document with a drop down, reverse engineered the generated document, then built code to create a dynamic dropdown.

I didn’t think much of it at the time, but looking back that does sound like a bit of code wizardry.  That’s the sort of thing that I don’t do often but sure do enjoy when I get the chance.