Digital Choke Daynotes

"Daynotes" are popularized by a Internet Web site called the "Daynotes Gang" (http://www.daynotes.com or http://www.daynotes.org), a collection of the daily technical and personal observations from the famous and others. That group started on September 29, 1999, and has grown to an interesting collection of individuals. Readers are invited and encouraged to visit those sites for other interesting daily journals. You can send your comments to us by clicking on any mailbox icon.

Reports

The usual Sunday pattern. Sleep in a bit, leisurely breakfast whilst reading the Sunday paper, off to church. Side trip to Pam's parent's house to see them before they take a trip to Houston to visit Pam's sister for Thanksgiving. Back home, where Pam started some brownies for desert after dinner. Kids and grandkids get here with much noise and laughter. The guys watch the end of the Oakland game while the girls prepare dinner. Tonight's menu was lasagne; my job is to grate the cheese and do a bit of preparation dish cleanup.

Dinner was great, as usual. Dessert even better. Brownies with ice cream on top, with hot fudge. Many carbohydrates. Careful walking away from the table; helped with the dishes. Relaxed a bit, then the grandkids went upstairs for a bath in the big tub. Much giggling and splashing could be heard. More visiting all around, then they left, and Pam and I are in our usual positions. We're on the couch, me with the laptop surfing the 'net, Pam with her book, soon to be positioned for her head rub while I play couch potato, looking at the usual Daynotes sites.

Although John Dominik seems to be MIA. It looks like the usual link to his pages, access through www.daynotes.com, don't work. It usually takes several clicks to make it from the link at Daynotes into his actual pages. But the first link doesn't work. I think that they are old ones, and perhaps the registration has expired. I'll have to drop a note to Brian Bilbrey, since he manages the www.daynotes.org site (Daynotes 'sister' site). Perhaps he has a better link. John's pages are always interesting to read.

Hey, John Dominik! Are you there? Please write soon. (John's site is still MIA. I suspect things will clear up soon. If anyone else is getting to his site, let me know.)

Monday, short week, the usual happenings. Spent most of the day documenting the new mail system and rules. Still need to set up some database backups, and log rotations. Nothing terribly hard about all of that, just a bit time consuming.

My watch died; probably just the battery. It wasn't an expensive watch, just a Timex with the usual features plus a compass (which is sort of interesting to have around). But the display, even with a new battery, was difficult to read with my slightly aging eyes. You had to tilt it just the right way to catch the light so I would could read it. So I decided it was time for a new one, sort of an early birthday present.

Pam and I went to Target after work, and they had Timex's (is that OK, Brian C.?) on sale. I found one with a nice clear display that I can see in sun and artificial light. The numbers are quite large, and even the date is large enough for me to easily read without glasses. And it had the compass feature. So, "Happy Birthday to me".

Then off to Safeway for some minor grocery items, including a frozen turkey for Thursday. It's slowly defrosting in the refrigerator. And, another present for me -- a bag of miniature Baby Ruth candy bars.

Short note this morning: John Dominik reports that "my site went weird when , in Mr. [Matt] Beland's [his host, and a fellow Daynoter] technical terms, the web server 'shat itself'." And it happened during Matt's first vacation in ten months. Probably that Critical Need Detector module. He should be available again; and here's his 'current' link: http://john.clandominik.com/current.html.

John also asked about the chicken breast recipe, which he couldn't find in last week's post...because the "last week" link up there at the top of the page was pointing to a week in October, rather than last week. So I fixed that problem (my fault -- a pointing error).

I had an interesting day today. My oldest daughter (Christine), who is the mother of our two wonderful grandchildren, needed a quick babysitter so she could go to her doctor's appointment. She had trouble finding someone, so I volunteered (it's a tough job....). So I left work shortly after lunch, and watched the two kids while she went to the doctor to verify her pregnancy. So, it is official....I get to continue with my job as grandfather. It was no problem watching the grandkids; they are always very excited to see "Poppa".

Side note, which I may have mentioned before. When Christine got married, I told her that I didn't want to be a grandfather before I hit 50 years old. She, being the obedient daughter, complied. When her children were old enough to learn to talk, she taught them to call me "Poppa", instead of "Grandpa".

After my short babysitting job (I did clean up the kitchen for her, as she is in the "morning sickness" phase), I went back to work for a bit until Pam was ready to leave. We celebrated my birthday by going to Black Angus (steakhouse) for dinner. It as quite good. I didn't eat so much that I got stuffed, but I am pleasantly full.

It started Wednesday after leaving work a bit early and doing some Christmas shopping looking. We looked at some artificial trees, but they are too expensive (and are very big to store). Then we met Christine and family at Mel's Drive In for dinner. Afterwards, Pam and Christine went off for some preliminary shopping, while Jared (Christine's husband) and I took the grandkids home. I'll take babysitting over shopping any time.

Christine and Jared went home about 7pm, leaving their children at our house. We watched some kids movies, read stories, and had bath time. They went to bed about 8:30pm, so it got a bit quiet then.

Turkey Day morning and the grandkids slept in until about 8am, with only a couple of nighttime visits needed to get them back into bed. The morning was spent with some cooking, lots of toys, books, a walk to the mailbox. Christine and Jared got back about noon, looking very refreshed. There was the usual amount of cooking, munching, kid movies, a bit of football, then the turkey feast. We started watching "Santa Claus 2", with the grandkids falling asleep early in the movie. Jared left after the movie (he had to work on Friday), and Christine stayed here so that she and Pam could get an early start at the stores Friday morning. That's a tradition for them: they shop, I babysit.

The girls left about 530am, and the kids didn't wake up until about 730am. We watched a bit of TV in bed, then went downstairs for breakfast. I put on their new Christmas videos, while I did the big cleanup in the kitchen. Another load of dishes into the dishwasher, scrubbed the counters, and cleared off the table. The grandkids and I spent the morning watching the tube, reading stories, playing with toys. The girls got back from their shopping excursion about 1130am, we all had lunch, then some more visiting. They left about 2pm, so Pam and I went out to do some errands, and then came home to relax.

I wandered around the Internet, doing a bit of geneology research. There are a couple of lines that go back about 16 generations. Most of the research was done with the LDS site www.familysearch.com , along with some other material we've had around here. It's all still preliminary, though, but interesting. I also made the usual rounds of the Daynotes gang. Noticed that Jerry Pournelle has got a new iMac, but is having real difficulties getting it to talk to the rest of his network. Interesting reading.

Tommorrow's plan is for a visit to the barber (for me), perhaps some craft fairs (I'll get to go to those), and perhaps a few minor chores around the house.

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