together
This last weekend we had a Bishop family reunion. Most of my aunts and uncles were there, with a few grandkids, and even a few great-grandkids. In all, there were about thirty of us there. My cousin Brett got a hold of my camera, so there are a lot of pictures.
Reminds me of another time when he took almost two hundred pictures with it during Thanksgivining. It was shortly after I got my new camera, and I wanted to see how many pictures could be taken on one set of batteries (rechargables, the alkalines never did more than twenty or thirty).
Anyway, it was a lot of fun, except I missed out on the bowling, because it got too late (I know, I’m getting old). One thing I am quite excited about is that my aunt Debbie got a lot more old pictures to scan, so I’ll have more to add to the Bishop Family History section sometime in the near future.
I also finished a video project that I had been working on, with completely free and open source tools, but more on that later.
No commentsthrice
Today is our third anniversary. So…
Happy Anniversary from your favorite nerd
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moving along
Tomorrow, I embark on a new journey. I’ve been working at an office supply shop doing computer and network service for the last few months. It’s been fun, but there’s just been something missing. My coworkers are great (they’ll probably never read this). I’ll miss Tom, Jeremy, and even April too. Denny…not so much. Actually, I go to church with him, so it would be tough to miss him when I still see him.
My new job will be as Technology Coordinator at DCC, our local community college. I’d give you a link to their website, but I don’t want anyone to see it yet; at least not until after I’ve had a chance to clean it up a bit. I’m pretty excited, as there will be a lot more of what I like to do there, but most importantly, its where I believe God wants me to be right now. I can’t ask for anything more than that (and I won’t).
So, farewell, old job. Hello, new job!
No commentsbirdie
Last week, a little birdie dropped into our lives (literally). We found him outside our back door, and he looked pretty pathetic. Couldn’t fly yet, and couldn’t walk very well either. My wife is a sucker for poor helpless animals, and I’m a sucker for my wife, so together we attempted to take care of it until it could get around on it’s own. I was quite pessimistic, since the last bird we tried to rescue died overnight. But, lo and behold, this birdie survived the first night, and even the second. The third morning, he was gone. We hope that he learned how to walk better, or that his family found him. There’s been a group of birds just like him this week in the backyard, so it’s possible he made it after all. Wahoo!
No commentsboom
Yesterday might have been my favorite Independence Day ever. It started out fun enough: riding 12 miles while my Dad & Brendan ran 10. I had stopped to chat with my cousin Afton, and then wasn’t sure which direction they had gone (silly me, ought to have asked what route we were taking). So I went up the highway back towards my parents’ house a mile, and they weren’t that direction. Turns out they had gone into town towards the church, and I finally caught back up with them right after they turned around.
I got home at around 9, and Scooter got all excited again, because he saw I still had the ‘running shorts’ on, and I felt bad for leaving hime before, so I ran a mile with him while Amanda got ready to go to the parade which started at 10. Made it home just in time to shower, and off we drove to the parade. It was nice and long, and while we got no candy (I’ve heard it’s not ‘cool’ for adults to scamper after candy), we did get free root beer and hot dogs afterwards.
Soon as we were done, I took Amanda home, and went over to the fireworks stand to help Pastor Curt for the rest of the day (until 10). I got around $175 worth of fireworks, and then won 4th prize, which was a couple of the smallish finale-type displays. After we closed up, we went to blow up our stuff along with the rest of the church folks. P.C. brought along a bunch of bigger displays and between all of us, we had a very nice show. The ‘Gone Fishing’ tipped over, and shot at my wife and mom. A bunch of us got hit by smaller pieces, but I found out later, that it had hit them with a couple shots. Had a blast lighting everything off, and even more fun watching it all.
All in all, a pretty fantastic day, even with a few mishaps along the way.
No commentsouch
Ok, so a combination of crazy things happened way too close together, and Dreamhost ended up having to disable the Mysql account for Wordpress. Firstly, I was trying out whoisi.com and added several friends and family, along with myself. I then reported a bug to the author, who then happened to mention it on his blog, which happens to be syndicated on Planet Gnome. In the middle of all this, I was finishing up migrating that last of my photos from Gallery to Wordpress. It just so happened that yesterday, I finished the last in a series of 10 ‘gallery’ posts that included around 700 photos of my family history. I then proceeded to make a final post that included links to all 10 of those galleries.
So, a word to the wise: Don’t write a post that links to ten other posts which include over seven hundred photos the day after you get mentioned on Planet Gnome.
As before, you can get to the Gallery via the link at the top of the page, and shortly, I’ll have the random image block back on the sidebar too.
daisy farewell
Over the last several weeks, our one female guinea pig had been having some health problems. We took her to the vet, and he gave her some stuff to make sure she was getting her nutrients. After a long struggle, she finally died on the morning of Saturday, May 24. There has been much sadness in our house as a result. We will miss her dearly.
syrup
Yup, you guessed it, this post is all about syrup…of the maple variety. I went to the store today to buy some maple syrup for pancakes. Simple task one might think. Find the ’syrup section’ and you have at least a dozen different choices. Then, something caught my eye. Western Family (the generic brand at this particular store) had a ‘premium’ syrup with 2-percent real maple syrup. Of course, then I was curious what percentage of real maple syrup some of the spendier brands contained. I checked them all, because I was incredulous at what I found. None. No other brand had any real maple syrup in them. One actually contained a little artificial maple flavoring, but that was as good as it got. That amazes me. Only the generic brand even bothered to sell a single bottle with maple syrup in it.
So, what did the others put in their syrup instead? They all contained the same exact two ingredients at the top of the list: corn syrup, and high fructose corn syrup. Needless to say, I don’t need that junk in my body (recent studies indicated that hfcs is linked to diabetes and other disorders), so I found the one sugar-free variety and bought that (it still has 12g of sugar-alcohol, however that works).
flying
Well, it’s been a couple weeks since I started my new job, and even longer since I wrote my last real blog post. The new job has been fun, with a few new challenges, and lots of new software to learn about. We had rented a small house originally that turned out to be a bust. The landlords don’t keep the place up real well, and aren’t too picky about who they let in, so it had a lovely cigarette smoke smell, and several other quirks here and there. At any rate, they were gracious enough to let us out of the lease, since our eyes were burning, and my wife wasn’t even able to spend the night there due to associated sinus problems.
Since then, things have been looking up. Amanda got a job at a flower shop last week, and today was her first day. We also received an offer on our house, which puts us in the same boat as my cousin, oddly enough. It was kind of funny to read her post, and say, hey, me too! At any rate, it’s very encouraging to have received an offer on the house, and there has been a lot more interest in it than we really expected, which is very nice.
