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13 row(s) meet your search criteria for January , 2003.
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Quotes from the Kids - January 29, 2003
Marie was putting on some lipstick in the car the other day (car was stopped so don't go there). Garrett commented "Mommy's putting on a happy face."
What a cool kid.
More Super Bowl - January 29, 2003
Commercials shown as part of the Superbowl have a life of their own. I was obviously lacking that fact when at the first break of the game I got up and went for some food. What was I thinking. Eat during the game and sit during the breaks! After being humiliated by the joyus laughter by my smarter guests, then admonished by them, I made a promise to never leave during the commercials again. While I was only partly successful, here are my favorites
- "Butt Drinker" (aka Upsidedown clown).
- "Ozzy's Nightmare"
- "Terry Tate, Office Linebacker"
- "Meet Mom"
- "Yo"
- "Fifth Dentist"
- "Castaway"
You can see them all at ifilm. I'd recommend a speedy internet connection, but they are watchable on a dial up.
Garrett's unique twist on Classic Composers - January 29, 2003
Garrett's developed a head cold that Mark had late last week. So he's been a little needy the last couple of days. Last night he was snuggling up with Marie (way past his bedtime) while she watched some ice skating special ('tis the season...sigh!).
This wasn't the normal type of skating event. This was some sort of theatrical event with no-name skaters doing interpretations musical numbers. At least that what it appeared for the 5 minutes that I watched.
This scene that I watched they were skating in 1920's costumes and interpreting "Rhapsody in Blue" (thus explaining why I watched it for 5 minutes as I am familiar, and kinda enjoy the tune). At the end we explained to Garrett that this was "Gershwin. Can you say Gershwin".
Garrett replied: "Gershiwn, Gershtwo, Gershthree".
Super Bowl - January 28, 2003
I thought the Super Bowl was fun to watch. This is probably because I picked the right team to root for. Had I been rooting for the Raiders I might have had a different opinion.
We had two other couples over for the game (Bill, Andrea and Ben Bigcraft and Kevin, Denice and Madison Hogan). Ben and Madison are in Garrett's "Playgroup" and are about the same age. They had great fun playing running and generally filling the house with joyful noise. At halftime I also participated in the festivities and promptly ran out of gas. We ate Pizza, consumed adult beverages, and made a dent in a batch of homemade cookies. This led to a colossal bout of indigestion later in the evening. UGH!
Las Vegas Trip - January 22, 2003
My mom retired from 29 years at Consumer Credit Counseling Service (CCCS) of Kern County this past December. Last weekend I participated in organizing a surprise party for her and many of her peers around the country held in Las Vegas. (Okay, actually I did very little of the organizing. Sister Jeanne and good friend Michelle (who lives in Vegas) did all the work. My responsibilities were merely to participate in the ruse and show up at the appointed place and time.)
Unfortunately, my Mom is too much the observant detective to pull off a "full" surprise (does anybody watch "Monk"? that's her without the obsessive compulsive disorder), the scope of the party rather that the existence of a party WAS a surprise. By all accounts, a good time was had by all.
For those who know me, know I like Vegas, and I like to hit the casinos. This is fed by a once in a lifetime winning streak that occurred in 1989. While I'm still a minimum $ bettor, I enjoy a noisy Craps table, a smiling and talkative Blackjack dealer, and the free beers (less the obligatory periodic tip) brought to you by large breasted, scantily clad waitresses.
My gambling this trip was limited to a couple hours on Saturday afternoon at the Hard Rock, and a late night run to the Palms casino. Now the Hard Rock clientele is a little out of my league (young, hip, fashionable, and rich - your saying.. which one doesn't Mark fit into...), and $10 blackjack tables were a little rich for my blood and I quickly changed my $80 into $25.
But on Sunday night, Jeanne and I went over to the Palms. The Palms clientele is also on the young side, but not nearly as fashionable nor hip. Rich is hard to assess as most people were betting good money, but didn't seem to act like they had that much - but that is a good thing as I felt very comfortable in that environment. The music in the background was good, TV's overhead in the gaming table area allowed your mind to wander away from them taking your money. (It seemed odd to watch Suze Orman while gambling.) I had a great experience playing $5/min Blackjack, with a really cool, female dealer (3rd baby due in 8 days) who dispensed game advice freely to those around the table. I was ready to leave with my $40+ winnings when Jeanne decided to "knock over" a penny slot machine. When I found her after about 10 minutes she had changed a $5 bill into over $32..... in pennies!.
So I wandered over to the $5 crap table to watch. But I was sucked in. But knowing that Jeanne would be soon ready to leave, I played the opposite way that most people bet on the craps table. I played the "don'ts", essentially with the house. This way requires patience, and its typically a way to not lose much money. I was able to sneak a $165 profit from that game, and had lots of fun with the dealer and stick man running the table (and lots of $1 beers).
I will definitely go back to the Palms again, and bring my friends.
Mojomark Lives! - January 22, 2003
Finally, the upgrade is complete! It seemed easy enough... obtain software, install software, voila! done. But alas, as you may have guessed, it was not as seemless as once thought.
I will spare you the gory details and stick to the highlights, since few of my readers (both of you) would understand anyway.
Prior to 12-January, 2003, this site was driven with Oracle's 8.1.7 database software, and the intellectual property of Mark consisting of 16,000 lines of code for this website, and over 11,000 for the Sports Pool Challenge. When the first upgrade attempt failed, the system told me the database was corrupted. I was up until 12:30 in the morning that night, and layed awake for another two hours thinking that all the data and all those programs were gone. Panic doesn't describe my feelings - Doom and depression began to set in. While you can't translate 27,000 lines of code into hours, you can bet that the investment was significant and the prospect of re-creating it from scratch was, in a nutshell, unattractive.
Luckily for me, the next day I was, after several harrowing hours of playing around, able to recover the database, programs and data. This time I did a full backup and saved it in a safe place.
The second upgrade attempt was another failure. The third attempt was successful in that a database was created, and I could import full backup and login successfully. I was also able to verify that all data and programs were intact. However, now the web server software that is bundled with the software wouldn't start. I tried a huge number of different installation and configuration options to no avail. Messages to the online Oracle help team resulted in some activities, but none ultimately resulted in success. At this point I was ready to roll back to the old version.
My last resort was to open an iTAR, which is essentially how you report bugs in the software to Oracle. An technical person get's assigned to the iTAR and you actually can talk to a person on the phone to help diagnose the problem.
After some effort, I was able to talk with the tech on Tuesday. He did not offer much more information, but suggested ANOTHER full re-install after a some Windows registry manipulation to ensure that all prior installations were removed. Apparently Oracle's uninstall process is not truly complete as I did find some "cling-ons" from prior installations. Once that was done, another re-install, re-import of the database, configuration settings, and all seems to work fine.
I now am running Oracle's most current database software, version 9.2 (aka 9i Release2).
The process was rather stressful, and I'm glad that its done, but be sure that it will be a long time until I do another Oracle software upgrade ! I hope it works well. You, my loyal readers should notice no change, begging the question "Why did I do it?" Over the last week or so I've asked myself that a few times as well.
Crown Moulding - January 10, 2003
I finished painting it today. Those who bet on it not happening until 2004 need to pay the piper. I even went around the house with a jar of spackle and filled in all those holes and dents in the drywall. The problem that raises is that I've now got more painting to do.
However, I've found that being less than fully utilized at work does have its advantages !
Balancing Act - January 09, 2003
This year I got a little more adventurous with the Christmas lights and put them on the upper eaves above the kids windows. Since my 20 foot ladder was insufficient to get up there (in fact this is the reason I've not done it in the past 6 Christmas years we've been in the house), this year I attacked it in a different manner. I opened up Sara's window, removed the screen and walked on the roof. While this doesn't sound dangerous, the roof pitch is severe, and frankly, it was scarrrrry. I held on to the rain gutter for safety, but I'm not sure had I slipped, if it would have held.
Anyway, today I got around to taking them down. The rest of the lights came down over a week ago, but these required me to wait. I knew that when I put them up, the roof was steep and there was no way I was getting up there when the roof had even a hint of moisture. The shingles have a tint of green to them so any wetness added to them would make them slicker than snot. So we've had about 4-5 days of no rain... very cold, but dry. So today the lights came down.
I kissed my kids, told my wife I loved her, and to spend the insurance money wisely, then headed up to the window for my act. While there was no slippage, and the lights came down without incident, I sure scared the neighbor. She offered her 19 yr old son to catch me, but the kid is about 150 lbs, and I'm sure had I fallen, he would have been hurt more than me.
So in my triumph, I replaced the gutter, and got the new twin bed into Sara's room.
Crown moulding is still not painted.
Comments & Guestbook Failing ! - January 08, 2003
I was beginning to wonder what every late night DJ wonders.... is there anybody out there?. So I tried to post a comment to a blog entry and low and behold it failed !@#! Maybe that's why nobody has made any comments. I'll fix this tonight.
SHOIT... Guestbook is not working either!@#!
These are both fixed now as of 8pm on 8-January. ARGH!@#
New Camera - January 08, 2003
Our old Kodak went belly up on us over the Christmas holiday so the picture taking was temporarily halted. However, that situation was rectified yesterday with a new Kodak Advantix. It is much like the last one as Marie favors its compact size (about 4" wide), ease of use (press the button), and speed of shutter (press the button, click, no waiting). Hopefully, more pictures will be on the way soon.
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