Twitter Surprise

Many years ago I met a wonderful young lady at church. Her name is Veronica Cramer. She attended high school with me too, though she was a couple years younger than me. One of the things that impressed me about her was her gratitude. She loves sending greeting cards, and my family and I receive numerous cards from her through the year. She has been an inspiration to me. I tried sending out Christmas cards regularly, but have not done very well in recent years.

I found a new "follower" on Twitter recently. She lives in Hawaii and was interested in my family name. We chatted about greeting cards a bit. She had ordered some custom made cards that she planned to send to special friends and family. After our conversation she arranged to get our address from my wife. I am very pleased to find that we received a beautiful Christmas card from her today. I'm including a scan of the front for your pleasure. "Mele Kalikimaka" means Merry Christmas in Hawaiian. Thank you @ucsmiles!

Work Holiday Party

We had our work Christmas Holiday Party today. Shh, not supposed to say that word...

It was very nice. We went to the Knott's Berry Farm Hotel (just outside of the theme park). Economy and budget made things a little tight this year, but the committee did a great job of putting it together. I had a nice plate of grilled salmon for lunch, including vegetables and a rice dish. Salad and rolls were served before the meal. Cheese cake for desert. Water, tea, punch and coffee available too. Money raised through out the year was used to reduce the cost of attending. Clerical staff are subsidized even further.

Santa did not make an appearance this year, as he has done in the past few years. That had been my job since Barbara retired (Her husband was Santa before me). Time contraints and budget seems to have nixed it this year. Many gifts were handed out by drawing names. Our office head gave a nice gift card to our janitor to help her during the holiday season.

Entertainment was limited to the talents of our staff. The highlight of the day was my immediate superior performing a traditional Indian (from India; does that need clarifying or is it no longer PC to do so) dance. She explained that she had not performed the dance since she was 17. She also explained the story behind the dance which help quite a bit to explain what was happening as the music and dance progressed. I love all the postures and finger positions. Very much the highlight of the day.

Wives are wonderful

"Wives are wonderful... I think everyone should have one." A phrase that I repeat on occasion. I'm being a bit silly, but it comes out of my deep appreciation for my wife. Shoot, I'd get her one if I thought I could. :)

Sometimes I am reminded how well we get along. We share the same religious beliefs. We have a very strong focus on raising our children. She chose to stop working so that she could spend time raising our kids, and I have supported her in that. I wouldn't mind her working, but only to know that she could take care of herself should anything happen to me. I admit that we don't agree on everything, but we do agree on most things, and the things we don't agree on are usually not worth fighting over. After all, I do like the house a little cooler than she usually does.

We see lots of "drama" in various parts of our extended family. We've even been told that we must be "holding out". But we are just not that interesting.

Well, I am sure that I am not nearly as eloquent as my wife, but I very much appreciate her and the hard work she puts into making a great marriage.

Ordered U-Verse

Well, my wife has either gotten tired of my complaining about our Internet connection, or she herself is tired of our poor connection. She decided that we could order AT&T's U-Verse as my Christmas present. I read a pretty good explanation about it here. However I managed to pull it off, I'm very eager to get it installed.

I see it as a present to the entire family. All five of us use the internet daily with plenty of squabbling over access to the computers we have. I also consider myself a more advanced user of the Internet. I maintain several permanent VPN connections to other places, and occasionally need to VPN into work. We watch some streaming video and the kids play quite a few online games. I do bit-torrent on occasion to download VMWare images or Linux distros. I also maintain a few applications that have web interfaces that I can access remotely. Add in wireless, sub-netting of my home network and other networking fun. Our current Internet rarely goes faster than 300-400 kbps, so the promised 6 mb connection will be real nice, even if we don't see a full rate.

We are transferring our home phone service into the plan. I thought there might be some interesting features that come along with it, but it sounds like we are essentially getting the same service, except flat rate with unlimited long distance. While we don't do a lot with our cell phones, we at least have a back up should problems arise.

Finally, we are getting a decent package of video chanels. We've had DirecTV, which I understand is a better service, but we don't currently have a real HD TV (only does 720p on component connections), so figure that is should be as good as what we are used to watching. Our set top box in the play room broke, and we haven't wanted to pay for the repair, so this move should also restore TV access in the playroom. The DVR seems cool too. We'll be able to record 4 channels and watch the recordings in either the family room or the play room. That would be good, since our youngest son monopolizes the family room TV with Cartoon network (and fairly poor choices of cartoons at that).

I need to read up a bit more and figure out how I should connect up some of my existing equipment. I figure the VPN stuff will be a bit tricky. Not sure when it will be installed yet, but I'll keep you posted. I'll be heading over to the U-verse web site to see if I can get a status update on my order.

I was a merit badge counselor at our Troop 1201 Merit Badge Day event today. This was the first time I've done this. I signed up this last month to be a counselor for the Computer Merit Badge, just for this event. I expect that I'll be contacted about being a counselor for boys on occasion now.

I had two sessions with three boys each. I had so much to tell these boys that the first group didn't get their 5 minute break. I was showing them computer parts and how they go together, telling them the history of computers, explaining networking and the Internet, talking about upcoming technology and all the things that I am so passionate about. They were yawning up a storm by the end of the session. The second group was yawning too, but at least they got a 5 minute break.

All in all, the day went very well. Lot's of merit badges earned, and a number of partials too. The coordinator had been so concerned about how it would go, but she did a great job at putting it all together. Next time it can only get better.

I had to mow the lawn today. My youngest son (11 years old) came out and asked if he could try. It was a little hard for him to steer the lawn mower, but he did a great job.

I should be able to hang some Christmas lights outside tomorrow. I'll be running long extension cords around the front and back yards, so may not get to mow again until after Christmas. What a shame.... :)

During Thanksgiving week my Aunt Darlene, her husband Gerry and my youngest cousin (now 8) came to down Disneyland. I was happy that we were able to meet up with them. My 15 year old daughter remembers when they came down about 4 years ago and adores my little cousin Nikki. My boys were not so interested in the whole affair, but they got desert out of the deal. We had a nice time and told a bunch of kid friendly jokes while catching up on family news. When I would take my family up north to see my grandmother, my aunt would try to find time to stop and in visit, but I don't get to see her too often.

My Uncle Gerry told me that he had a photo of my father and would send a copy down. I received the photo today. I don't have a lot of photos of my father, especially from so long ago. I hadn't seen this look before. My father passed away when I was young, so the few things I have are precious to me. Thank you uncle.