OK boys and girls it's time for kewl new software with Jim. The word for the day is Skype. "So what the hell is Skype?", you say? I say, "Potty mouth!", then follow up with, "It's a chat client." But it's a lot more than just that. It's a text chat client, it's an audio chat client and it's a video (beta) chat client. Here's the Skype business model. The SW is FREE! If you've got Skype and your buddy has Skype, you can text, audio and video chat for FREE regardless of your coordinates on the blue marble we call Earth. Did ya hear that? Free communication from Skype-mate to Skype-mate! It gets better. Let's say I'm sitting here on my ThinkPad and I wanna call someone on a POTS (plain old telephone service) land line. Then you Skype Out. Skype Out means you pay $.017 per minute continental and some other paltry amount for international. At essentially a penny a minute, I decided to throw ten bucks into the tip jar before I got my drink. I was impressed to say the least. As I said earlier, the audio quality was amazing. But what was really cool was that I was just sitting there talking into my ThinkPad and getting great phone service. I usually spend between 8 and 14 hours a day in front of my ThinkPad. Now to have a phone wherever I have a network connection, that rates pretty high on my neato scale. Now, if you wanna take the next step, you can Skype In. For twelve bucks for three months or $38 for a year, you can buy a Skype In phone number and you can receive phone calls right to your PC.
So there ya go. If you've got a desktop PC, head down to RadioShack and buy a $6 microphone and plug it in to the mic jack or the line in jack. If you've got at notebook PC, odds are a mic is already incorporated into the keyboard area. Set up a Skype account, install the software and enjoy the kewl.
PS - Regarding the toes, the next x-ray is scheduled for Feb 01. Still hurts, but nothing agonizing. Thanks to everyone for all the offers of help, rides to work and help in general.
Friday, January 20, 2006
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Ouch.
For those of you that have read the year end note, the irony is pretty apparent. As the note closed it said we were looking forward to the new year, bla, bla, bla and then followed it up with a PS informing everyone that I had broken my toe. So here's the details...
Karen and I were about to watch a movie an I ran upstairs to get a Clif bar as my movie snack. The upstairs isn't lit in the evenings as David's bedroom is upstairs. The Clif bars were in the room over the garage where the Christmas tree was and thus we had that room cordoned off with a 28" high baby gate. For those of you that know me well, there's only one speed at which to execute and that's full (fool?) speed ahead. As I went to dash through the doorway I hit the baby gate. Unfortunately, the baby gate was on the near side of the doorway meaning the lips that prevented the door from swinging fully also kept the baby gate from moving inward at all. In less than a half second my face was in the carpet on the other side of the baby gate and my feet were now about five and a half feet in the air. It scared the hell out of me, and for a brief second I though, "OK, I've had a spill, but don't think I'm hurt." Turns out I thought too soon. In the second half of that second, the baby gate then collapsed out and away from where my head was leaving my feet to free fall into the floor. The carpet made little difference.
The next day I went to the urgent care center and had an x-ray and in the absence of a radiologist was told that it looked like I had fractured the big bone in my big right toe. The urgent care physician also instructed me to go see an orthopedist ASAP which I did.
The orthopedist did not have good news. The official news was that I had splintered the large bone in my big right toe in at least three places and it appeared that I had also fractured the small bone in that same toe. They also said it was entirely likely that I had broken other toes, but that was not of real concern because unless it's the big toe they really don't do anything for "also broken" toes. Regarding the broken big toe bones the Dr. advised me to take this seriously as the big toe plays a pretty important role in balance and weight bearing.
For the time being, the pain is being managed by some pretty strong stuff called Percocet. No walking or driving or - they actually told me this - no child care if I take two.
I have to go back February 1st for a status check. I'll find out one of two things after this visit. 1) Fragments are staying where they need to be and the bones will heal fine or 2) the bones are not healing in the position desired and, most likely, surgery to correct or better the situation.
I'm pretty depressed about the situation right now and not by way of self pity. Karen now has the joy of caring for two boys each day and her days weren't walks in the park to begin with. I tried going to work this past Monday and aggravated my lower back while at work on crutches. Tuesday and Wednesday I was almost completely immobile.
If I end up not having surgery, then this will all be over by the end of February and we'll see how it goes with running and cycling. I was looking forward to a new schedule of working out in the new year before all this happened and now that's been pushed out quite a bit. I had even done a couple of rides before the new year so that I wasn't starting from zero on January 1st. I've started from less than zero before and I'll do it again. It just gets harder as you get older as most of you old farts know!
I'll hang in there. Pray for my wife, not me.
Karen and I were about to watch a movie an I ran upstairs to get a Clif bar as my movie snack. The upstairs isn't lit in the evenings as David's bedroom is upstairs. The Clif bars were in the room over the garage where the Christmas tree was and thus we had that room cordoned off with a 28" high baby gate. For those of you that know me well, there's only one speed at which to execute and that's full (fool?) speed ahead. As I went to dash through the doorway I hit the baby gate. Unfortunately, the baby gate was on the near side of the doorway meaning the lips that prevented the door from swinging fully also kept the baby gate from moving inward at all. In less than a half second my face was in the carpet on the other side of the baby gate and my feet were now about five and a half feet in the air. It scared the hell out of me, and for a brief second I though, "OK, I've had a spill, but don't think I'm hurt." Turns out I thought too soon. In the second half of that second, the baby gate then collapsed out and away from where my head was leaving my feet to free fall into the floor. The carpet made little difference.
The next day I went to the urgent care center and had an x-ray and in the absence of a radiologist was told that it looked like I had fractured the big bone in my big right toe. The urgent care physician also instructed me to go see an orthopedist ASAP which I did.
The orthopedist did not have good news. The official news was that I had splintered the large bone in my big right toe in at least three places and it appeared that I had also fractured the small bone in that same toe. They also said it was entirely likely that I had broken other toes, but that was not of real concern because unless it's the big toe they really don't do anything for "also broken" toes. Regarding the broken big toe bones the Dr. advised me to take this seriously as the big toe plays a pretty important role in balance and weight bearing.
For the time being, the pain is being managed by some pretty strong stuff called Percocet. No walking or driving or - they actually told me this - no child care if I take two.
I have to go back February 1st for a status check. I'll find out one of two things after this visit. 1) Fragments are staying where they need to be and the bones will heal fine or 2) the bones are not healing in the position desired and, most likely, surgery to correct or better the situation.
I'm pretty depressed about the situation right now and not by way of self pity. Karen now has the joy of caring for two boys each day and her days weren't walks in the park to begin with. I tried going to work this past Monday and aggravated my lower back while at work on crutches. Tuesday and Wednesday I was almost completely immobile.
If I end up not having surgery, then this will all be over by the end of February and we'll see how it goes with running and cycling. I was looking forward to a new schedule of working out in the new year before all this happened and now that's been pushed out quite a bit. I had even done a couple of rides before the new year so that I wasn't starting from zero on January 1st. I've started from less than zero before and I'll do it again. It just gets harder as you get older as most of you old farts know!
I'll hang in there. Pray for my wife, not me.
Thursday, October 27, 2005
W. Is An Idiot
OK, so it's been a while. What's new? Well, I've actually worked out two days in a row!!! Bought a new watch for training - hoping that would provide some momentum. The momentum so far has only been that I've worked out for two days in a row. The watch is really cool. It's the Polar RS200sd. It has a foot pod that measures distance - that's cool! I'm trying to figure out a couple of things like reporting and recording of my workouts at the Polar site. The manual is about 100 pages so give me a little time here. If figuring out the Polar account and uploading proves to be too much of a hassle, I'll start blogging my workouts here.
I am now a certified Project Management Professional, a.k.a. PMP. Got my certification at the end of August. Eight years experience plus a $3,500 boot camp and Viola! I actually enjoyed the class a lot and learned quite a bit. It put a lot of experiences in context for me and gave me some much needed validation for things I was already doing. It's a very serial and logical discipline so it very much up my alley.
Karen, David and I are getting ready to move into our new house next weekend and we are very much looking forward to that. I swear there are two baby elephants living upstairs from us at present and there simply is never a moment's peace and quiet. We were supposed to close tomorrow, 28 October, but it was evident to us that that was unrealistic about two weeks ago. Closing is now looking like Wednesday of next week. For those of you that are close family or friends you already know how trying the last several months have been for us. The culmination of my work, the new house, the New Bern house completion efforts, Karen's accident and my certification have left us quite thin. No complaining here, just saying it's been a tough last 6 months. I have declared 2006, "The year of the recliner". That is unless I decide to do an Ironman distance event...
So as I mentioned before, the house in New Bern is finally complete and on the market. I think the effort was more than we estimated, but in hind sight, we'd still do it over again. With that said, I also think if we could go back in time 15 months knowing what we know now, we would easily shave off about 10% of the total time. Bum Phillips once said, "Hard work and good times go together. It's just that the hard work comes first." Amen, Bum.
Saving the best for last. The Zoop report. Yes, we have new pictures coming soon so stay tuned. It may be another week or two, but we have all kinds of new pictures of the wiggle monster. He is walking and talking. Karen and I are now very much aware that not only are we not in control, but we didn't have it when we thought we did. Seriously, David is doing very well in all areas. He is the joy of our lives and, God willing, we'll make him a little sister next year.
So that's all for now. Our new address will be 608 Gravel Brook Court, Cary NC 27519 after next week. I have no idea what our phone number will be, but if it changes and you need it you can always use the Preis directory to get it. Take care, God bless and George W. Bush is an idiot.
I am now a certified Project Management Professional, a.k.a. PMP. Got my certification at the end of August. Eight years experience plus a $3,500 boot camp and Viola! I actually enjoyed the class a lot and learned quite a bit. It put a lot of experiences in context for me and gave me some much needed validation for things I was already doing. It's a very serial and logical discipline so it very much up my alley.
Karen, David and I are getting ready to move into our new house next weekend and we are very much looking forward to that. I swear there are two baby elephants living upstairs from us at present and there simply is never a moment's peace and quiet. We were supposed to close tomorrow, 28 October, but it was evident to us that that was unrealistic about two weeks ago. Closing is now looking like Wednesday of next week. For those of you that are close family or friends you already know how trying the last several months have been for us. The culmination of my work, the new house, the New Bern house completion efforts, Karen's accident and my certification have left us quite thin. No complaining here, just saying it's been a tough last 6 months. I have declared 2006, "The year of the recliner". That is unless I decide to do an Ironman distance event...
So as I mentioned before, the house in New Bern is finally complete and on the market. I think the effort was more than we estimated, but in hind sight, we'd still do it over again. With that said, I also think if we could go back in time 15 months knowing what we know now, we would easily shave off about 10% of the total time. Bum Phillips once said, "Hard work and good times go together. It's just that the hard work comes first." Amen, Bum.
Saving the best for last. The Zoop report. Yes, we have new pictures coming soon so stay tuned. It may be another week or two, but we have all kinds of new pictures of the wiggle monster. He is walking and talking. Karen and I are now very much aware that not only are we not in control, but we didn't have it when we thought we did. Seriously, David is doing very well in all areas. He is the joy of our lives and, God willing, we'll make him a little sister next year.
So that's all for now. Our new address will be 608 Gravel Brook Court, Cary NC 27519 after next week. I have no idea what our phone number will be, but if it changes and you need it you can always use the Preis directory to get it. Take care, God bless and George W. Bush is an idiot.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
DMT Cycling Shoes Suck!
Gallery III has been added! So I finally got off my ass, pulled the pix outta the camera and have published them. Didn't know until recently that MY FREAKIN' UPLOAD SPEED IS ONLY 56Kbps!!! Talk about a crawl fest!!! Any way, they're posted.
DMT Cycling shoes suck!!! I put that in the metadata associated with this page. Hope I get as many hits as Google. I can dream. Why, you ask? Wife buys me $245 pair of cycling shoes in 2001. I put less than 2,000 miles on them. The soles delaminate from the lasts. For $245 I figured I'd get, "We'll send you out a new pair right away Mr. Preis!". Wrong. Sent them to the losers at Bicycle World USA who weren't even apologetic. Asked them to overnight 'em back so I could do a big group ride I was looking forward to. Didn't happen. They delaminted again about a month ago. Morons at Bicycle World USA sent me a note with the name of the current distributor - which they ALMOST got right. Tried them and got, "Well our policy is one year warranty bla, bla, bla..." Planet plagued with morons. OK guys here's a clue - If someone coughs up nearly $250 for a pair of cycling shoes and they freakin' fall apart you send them new ones!!! I'm almost certain it's in the ISO manual. Oh by the way from someone that has admittedly impossibly high standards, the first pair of cycling shoes I ever bought in 19 EIGHTY NINE are still in use today; soles and lasts still 100% attached. They were Shimano's. Do you think I learned my lesson and went out and bought a pair of Shimano's? You betcha.
Wednesday, February 9, 2005
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Work and Starting Down the Yellow Brick Road to PMP
Gotta hurry up and type this before I have to change the date. Another 16 hour day at work today ended with the news that another very long day was likely tomorrow. So I figured the best thing to do was to not sleep and provide some fodder for both regular visitors of my site.
I thought this rocked. WARNING: It's for the digerati so if 19th century Mennonite needlecraft is your thing, we might have a disconnect. I have no idea where I find this stuff. I should try that back button sometime, eh?.
I plan to start a section of the web site devoted to studying for the PMI exam which I need to pass this year. I figured that I would create my own informal, but complete, studyguide in HTML and then create some neato whizbang things like practice/self tests with PhP and JavaScript. I will also edit my JavaScripts to read images from all my pix on the server so that the ticker of images you see on my home page has greater breadth. And, uh, oh yeah I need a navbar on all my pages. How lame am I.
Oh well, the Tylenol PM is kicking in; that's Latin for I'll need electric shock to drag my ass outta bed tomorrow morning. Uusally it's less than 30 seconds from the time I crack my eyes open until I have toothbrush in hand. The exception is the morning after a Tylenol PM. Anyone got a defibrulator on 'em? Yes, it's that bad. Hmmm... Coin toss time. Should I a) go make a seriously strong bloody Mary and fall asleep on the couch whilst waiting for the Girls Gone Wild info-mercial and guarantee misery tomorrow or b) go straight to bed and toss and turn for several hours before realizing it's 5:00 AM which is when I usually get up. I'll letcha know tomorrow.
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Slip Slidin' Sideways
Got the button working to e-mail all the Preis' with a single click; pretty happy with that. Didn't exactly implement the vision I had in my head, but it works and aesthetically, it's OK.
The trifecta of powdery snow falling on frozen road surfaces and everyone trying to get out of the park yesterday generated a drive home time for me of about an hour yesterday. I live about 16 miles from work. 16 miles... One hour... I'm starting to think about a "running shoes" solution at this point. IBM (tick-toc, tick-toc, tick-toc) opened at 10:00 AM today due to the roads still sucking. Now the weather people are calling for another 2 inches tonight. It ain't the amount of snow here that's the problem. Actually, slightly more would be better for driving. Yesterday's inch was worst case; it was just enough to create an 1/8th inch of ice on the road surface as the cars drove over it. If I didn't see 10 accidents, I didn't see one. Actually watched one in slow-mo. Some poor (not a financial reference) Hispanic dude in a utility truck, slid into the back of some white chick's Mercedes. I must admit that I was NOT able to stay on the road all the way home. Ass-end of the taco (Tacoma) got squirrelly on me on a left-hand turn over a small decline and I did a 270 degree spin and slid off onto the grass/dirt. The taco is the worst vehicle in the world to be driving on snow/ice. One, it's intrinsically light. Two, tires almost as narrow as my mind. Tres (for our Hispanic friends) it's a truck with no - and I mean no - weight over the drive wheels. Man do I miss the Rover :-(
So today is inauguration day, huh? Thank God for large volumes of alcohol.
The trifecta of powdery snow falling on frozen road surfaces and everyone trying to get out of the park yesterday generated a drive home time for me of about an hour yesterday. I live about 16 miles from work. 16 miles... One hour... I'm starting to think about a "running shoes" solution at this point. IBM (tick-toc, tick-toc, tick-toc) opened at 10:00 AM today due to the roads still sucking. Now the weather people are calling for another 2 inches tonight. It ain't the amount of snow here that's the problem. Actually, slightly more would be better for driving. Yesterday's inch was worst case; it was just enough to create an 1/8th inch of ice on the road surface as the cars drove over it. If I didn't see 10 accidents, I didn't see one. Actually watched one in slow-mo. Some poor (not a financial reference) Hispanic dude in a utility truck, slid into the back of some white chick's Mercedes. I must admit that I was NOT able to stay on the road all the way home. Ass-end of the taco (Tacoma) got squirrelly on me on a left-hand turn over a small decline and I did a 270 degree spin and slid off onto the grass/dirt. The taco is the worst vehicle in the world to be driving on snow/ice. One, it's intrinsically light. Two, tires almost as narrow as my mind. Tres (for our Hispanic friends) it's a truck with no - and I mean no - weight over the drive wheels. Man do I miss the Rover :-(
So today is inauguration day, huh? Thank God for large volumes of alcohol.
Friday, January 14, 2005
Ta!-Da!
Check out the new Preis family directory. Kinda neato, huh? Wrote it all myself (...with a little help from a PhP genius). I'm going to tweak the output page so that it coughs back the info looking more like an address format and I'm also going to add a function to e-mail all the Preis folks that have e-mail addresses so you can shotgun out a message if and when necessary. Anyway I hope you like it. Comments and suggestions always welcome. Oh yeah, if you had the old directory book marked or stored in your favorites you'll be sent to the new page automatically. Peace.
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Coding, Running and Home Sweet Home
Nothing new on the site today. Still working on the mechanism to redo the family directory. Kinda learning PhP and and SQL stuff at the same time so there's 2x the opportunity to get stumped. I know! I should run right out and buy a 694 page book from Barnes and Nobel - that usually solves everything. I must have 20 of those 694 page books of which I've read a combined 69.4 pages of. They're all good reference books and I feel smarter just having bought them (ironic, huh?)
My good friend Grant in Maryland wants to know if I wanna do a September-ish marathon. Haven't given him an answer yet. When I do it will be a strong position either way. Nothing worse than a half hearted effort at an endurance event. Did that ONCE at a triathlon back in 1998. Major suckage. Survived the swim and the bike, but nearly half way through the run I asked another runner, "How far until the turn-around?" He responded, "Don't worry. You'll never see it." Ouch!!! That hurt! He was right and ultimately that hurt more, thus my lesson has been learned.
Headed back down to New Bern this weekend to work on That Old House. This weekend's tasks are most likely upstairs windows and installation of all the insulation. I hate scraping paint. I really hate breathing in the vapors of lead based paint as I heat the paint with a heat gun, but a little lead poisoning never hurt anyone right? Oh well. The light is clearly at the end of this tunnel and hopefully we'll be done in February. Did I mention that we're looking at another house?
Sunday, January 9, 2005
Cud and Run
Hey Y'all! Nothing really big and new. I have made some progress on scribbling out some PhP code. Tonight I conquered a if...else conditional thang and then populated a table cell with an e-mail address so I'm pretty happy. I would post my progress but right now the password to the database is hard coded in the PhP so we'll leave that off-line for now.
Thinking about committing to a fall marathon. In 2001 I was up to a long run of 20 miles whilst training with Karen for the Marine Corps marathon. Shoulda found one right after that one 'cause the likelihood of my fat ass slogging out 26.2 seems remote at present. There's some positivity for ya! That'll come in handy at 20 miles when I'm questioning the sanity of self-propulsion for such distances. Today is the 9th and I've only not run for 2 or 3 days this year - WHAT A STREAK!
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Tsunami
I hope you enjoyed yesterday's chuckle-gram below, but today I think I'm going to have to put a special link here. It's a link to a list of sites assisting with the relief efforts related to the tsunamis in Asia. The link goes to a page on CNN and you can choose from a plethora of organizations from there.Click here for relief sitesGive what we can practically. Pray until we think we're getting on God's nerves. We won't be getting on his nerves, it just gives us a target.
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Salmonella
So Jim, What did you get for Christmas? Food poisoning. Yep, the old rot gut got me. You know the funny thing? My parents have this bathroom in their house and I've always laughed at how close the sink was to the toilet. One could (... assuming one wanted to) brush one's teeth and pee at the same time. Well, this turned out to be a handy feature. Spent the better part of 16 hours praying death would come quickly or that I'd puke and crap enough to fit into the jeans I attended pre-school in. I'm fine now thank you. Other than that - Mrs. Lincoln - had a wonderful holiday.
The Zoop scored big acquiring a nearly life-size stuffed horse from my sister and tons of good clothes. A note about gifts for folks with new el niños - CLOTHES CLOTHES CLOTHES. Damn things are expensive and apparently these orgs grow about 2cm an hour whether in direct sunlight or not. Karen and I both got each other one big gift and a couple also-ran gifts. The fact that Karen continues to be my wife is a gift every day. That's all for now.
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