Thanksgiving at Home

We hope that all of our friends and family had a nice and happy Thanksgiving. As some of you know, we decided to stay home due to some health issues that I had a few days before the Thanksgiving holidays. I am doing fine, I just sure miss my caffeine :) We stocked up on Koolaid packets, Sprites and Caffeine free DP's. I still have our De-Caf tea, which we have always used, and now we are using De-Caf coffee as well. The De-Caf DPs are eh... ok I guess. Not like the real thing, definitely.

As for Thanksgiving, Early Thanksgiving morning Laura and I ventured to HEB and got in our shopping before the crowds. Then we decided not to have our Thanksgiving meal until later in the afternoon. Laura spent most of her day working on a paper for her History class at UTPA, and I relaxed and worked on a conversion for one of our clients (more on that in a bit). Then around 5:00 we had a great little meal, just Laura and I. Some ham, green bean casserole, mashed tatters, roles, and cranberries hmmm. It was great. We both were wishing we were in Austin for Mom's cookin', but this will work.

Must of today has been about the same as yesterday. Laura working on her History paper and I am working on the AS400 conversion. Laura made us a wonder breaklunch around 11, then she did some cleaning and misc stuff, then back to work on the paper. I did a bit of sweeping around the house and just now shut down the client AS400 I have sitting here, about to relax, figure out what we are going to do for supper and watch some TV or something.

Speaking of the AS400



There it sits on my office floor. This is for a DATA-COM Client, I am in the process of migrating their files and programs off their S/36 and onto the AS400. Which is turning into more work than I thought, but that is ok. Up to V5R2, IBM included a Migration Utility, which helped with the migration process. But it is kinda finicky and doesn't always do the right thing. But as of V5R3 (which this machine has), that utility is not included! But, actually it's better. This way I get to monitor the migration process, make a list of programs that failed the conversion, etc. I have restored all the files and libraries, compiled all the programs and screen formats. There were maybe 20-30 programs that did not compile successfully, so I will look at them tomorrow. After that, I have to work on a solution for a little dilemma associated with the move to the AS400.

One of the tricks we used on The S/36 will not work on the AS400. SUBROC, a subroutine that we used to do some printing tricks will not work on the AS400 (actually it does not exist on the AS400). So, I'll have to figure the best way to get around that. I have 2-4 ideas on how to do it, just need to figure out which one will be the best option.

Well, I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving, we hope that our Colorado family makes it home save and sound, back to the cold north. We'll eat some whataburgers and Patos for you :)

It's not that bad I guess

Well, I'll be leaving in a bit to take Laura to the airport, and then I'll be missing her for 6 days, but she'll be back. I hope! Weather is nice in Cali... :)

The root canal went pretty well I think. Thanks to everyone for the prayers. I was in the room around 9, and out by about 10. It was a pre-molar tooth, so there was only one root to contend with. Afterwards I came hope and relaxed a bit, grabbed a quick nap, mainly because I was really tense during the procedure and need to wind down. After I take Laura to the airport, I'll be headed back to work for the rest of the day.

Not going to be a great day

Well, I already know today is not going to be a good day, but I'll survive :)

9:00 I am scheduled for my first ever root canal :(. But, it's time I get my teeth fixed up and this will actually be the 2nd step. About 1-2 months ago, I had to have another 2 extractions, since the teeth were not worth keeping, and also got a "deep cleaning" or root scaling. That was not fun. Hopefully the root canal won't be as bad. I'll have it crowned probably after the first of the year.

Also today Laura is flying out for San Diego for some sort of Communications conference. She'll be back on Tuesday of next week, then on Thursday morning early, we'll be driving up to Austin to spend Thanksgiving with my parents and the Denver crew. We are definitely looking forward to that.

New Computers and Virii!!

Saturday morning, I headed over to the south side of McAllen to CompUSA to get some upgrades for my main computer system. I came back with a AMD CPU, new MB, 500gb HD, 2gig of RAM, and a new case, along with a few other items that I would use to take my old components, and make a computer for Nick.

I spent saturday afternoon setting up the new machine, transferring files from the old HD's to the new one, installing all the software I use, etc etc. I was pretty much finished with it by Saturday night... time to rest.

Sunday AM, I go back to customizing my setup, and my AVG gets hit with some virii being put on my machine! ALERT!... after a few seconds I notice that they are on the shared drives. And only shares that Laura has access to. So, I took a gander at her laptop and sure enough, it was infected. I shut it down and made note to deal with it after church. I also scanned her USB stick, and it was infected as well. I got it cleaned up and told her to stay away from the laptop until I was done. It had been unplugged from the network, and I also powered down our wireless just in case.

I made a few attempts to clean it, to no avail. We had already discussed reinstalling that particular machine, as it was getting dog slow. So yesterday afternoon, I just removed the partitions and reinstalled. I am about 90% done with reinstalling now, and will finish it up tonight. Then I can get back to messing with my new speed demon.

Man that new setup is fast. Now if only it could speed up my typing and improve my grammar as well!

Traveling Aboard (with a broad)

Saturday Afternoon, Laura and I ventured to another country. We traveled down to the Weslaco area, then headed south, parked our care on the US side of the river and got our exercise walking over the bridge to Progesso. We had started our quest to find the ancient grail of vanilla!

The contrast of north and south is just so amazing. Never mind the beggar's presenting their caps through the openings in the bridge side rail. What first caught my eye, and it wasn't until we were in the pharmacy, was the armored police vehicle, loaded up with policia, sporting shiny machine guns.

Once are shopping venture was done, and as we were headed back toward the bridge, we noticed a sandbag bunker, with 3 armed police, all sporting similar weapons. And this was not the mexican border officials, it was the police, about a block away from the bridge. Although it is amazing to see that, it was a bit re-assuring.

On other things, we went to the same store we went to last time (which we conversed about on our trip over, it was before we got married... been awhile :> ). They have all kinds of neat stuff in there. Of course you have your liquor, vanilla and mexican candies and cookies. But they have clothing, statues, swords, and all sorts of mexican made items. It's a great place to just browse around, just watch your head.

We have to go back to get some more vanilla this coming weekend, we did get enough, but the wife's Mom visited us on Sunday and aquired a few bottles before leaving. So we need to replace those ;)

The Truth

Today I will forgo my rants and ravs, my delirious babble and send you to the truth.

You cannot be a Christian and vote for Obama