Holy moly...what a whirlwind summer. I suppose I should catch everybody up on what's been happening. About a year ago, Valerie's brother Dan accepted a job with Alltel Communications in Little Rock, Arkansas. Back in June, I did the same.
Valerie and I had not intended to move from Utah for several years but, sometimes, life throws you a curve ball and you either hit it or strike out. To make a short story longer, we are currently living with Dan and April in their guest room while our house is being built (right next door, actually). This is the second house we've built from the ground up but I get to chronicle the building of this one since we recently bought a digital camera. You'll be able find the latest house pic galleries here.
Valerie, myself, and the girls are absolutely loving it here in Arkansas and couldn't be happier. Alexis is growing up so quickly...I can't believe she'll be starting kindergarten next year. She's really enjoying having her cousins, Alex and Trevor, to play with all the time. Little Sienna, seeing them play, started walking at eight months and is now getting it down to the point where she is going to be able to hold her own with them soon. =] As soon as they all get back from a trip to Utah, I'll get some recent pics of them up. Sadly, I wasn't able to go with them since I didn't have enough vacation accrued with Alltel as I only started in June.
--
[Skwire]>-<[6:16 AM]
[5.10.2004]
More pics! >Click
--
[Skwire]>-<[7:32 AM]
[3.30.2004]
Finally fixed my broken real-time DSL traffic graphs. Apathy rules.
Edit: They're busted again until our new house is finished (March 2005).
>Graphs
--
[Skwire]>-<[6:21 AM]
[1.26.2004]
Finally a moment to post some great news. Our second daughter was born January 17th! She came into this world some ten days early but is as healthy as can be. Everybody is doing great. Valerie had another easy delivery as with Alexis (easy for me to say, eh?). She was in labour roughly four hours with only about ten minutes of pushing total. Alexis has been a great big sister, too. She's EXTREMELY protective and motherly to her little sister. It's incredible to see.
Stats:
Sienna Isabella Holmes
January 17, 2004
1:45pm
7 lbs 1 oz
19.5" long
Very very similar to Alexis:
Alexis Elisabeth Holmes
April 7, 2000
12:58pm
6 lbs 9 oz
18.5" long
Ever since we've had Alexis, I've wanted a second daughter. This is too awesome for words. =]
--
[Skwire]>-<[5:41 AM]
[11.04.2003]
I sold a computer (that's a first, usually give them away to family) I put together from parts on my bench and was able to purchase a DVD burner with the proceeds. Very very cool. Upon recommendation, I bought a Pioneer DVR-A06 +/- 4x. Unlike my first CD-R burner...trying to think in terms of 4.7 gigs of space per disc is somewhat strange. I started shifting some files around to free up a good bit of DVD ripping space. I was moving a gig here, couple hundred megs there, et al. I got to thinking...I could burn off nearly five GIGS (!!) of this crap to one DVD-R. Somewhat startling...but in a good way. =]
--
[Skwire]>-<[3:19 PM]
[8.23.2003]
Due to an extended power outage that outlasted my UPS', my main LAN server lost its tremendous uptime earlier this afternoon. I was able to snag the final uptime on this box before the UPS gave out:
C:\>uptime
\\JEROME has been up for: 345 day(s), 10 hour(s), 50 minute(s), 7 second(s)
I wanted to make it to a year so badly! Hahaha. So close. Not too bad for a Win2k box, eh? gg, Utah Power & Light.
--
[Skwire]>-<[12:24 AM]
[7.28.2003]
In April 2003, we had some more formal-style pictures of Alexis taken. They turned out phenomenally well so I just had to get the scanner going again. Pictures are here:
>Frames >No Frames
--
[Skwire]>-<[9:28 AM]
[6.21.2003]
I've been using DVD Profiler for a few years to catalog our DVD collection and recently made use of its online database feature. This is a GREAT program that is worth every bit of the twenty dollar registration cost. Check out our collection in the Databases section.
--
[Skwire]>-<[4:26 AM]
[5.24.2003]
For each of the past three years, my wife and I have completed a major project for our house. The first year was laying $2500 worth of concrete to extend our driveway and provide a patio in the backyard. Last year was installing a fully-automated sprinkler system and sod for our yard. This year we wanted to build a play area for our daughter (she turned three last month) complete with a largish wooden swingset. Our backyard slopes somewhat so we had to build a containing box so we could provide a level surface for the swingset. Once we built that and levelled it out we brought in some fill dirt and levelled that to about five inches from the top. We filled the remainder with wood chip which provides a cushiony surface in case of falls. However, the wood chips tend to stick to clothing and make their way inside the house. Ah, well, can't win them all. =] At any rate, Valerie and I are quite proud of Alexis' "park" as she calls it. Check out the pics here:
>Frames >No Frames
--
[Skwire]>-<[6:33 PM]
[5.06.2003]
Long time no post so I set up a blog in hopes that I might be inclined to post more. Big hope, yes... To keep things nice and consistent, I've archived the old news here. I switched webservers from Apache on my router to Abyss on Jerome. What a great piece of programming. Small, fast, full-featured, and it's FREE. Free is good. It supports SSI (server-side includes) which allow me to incorporate this blog into my main page VERY easily.
--
[Skwire]>-<[8:05 PM]