web log - saturday, july 27, 2001

day 14. mommy, mommy... make the man stop! :p

no baby yet. not even a sign. the wife's getting a little nervous because she doesn't want to be induced. and she doesn't want to take castor oil. personally, i don't know anyone that would willingly take castor oil... for any reason. we have another doctor's appointment tomorrow. maybe he'll have some suggestions. maybe not. :\

we looked at 3 more ford explorers today. a 1998 (eddie bower), a 1997 & a 1996. the 1998 is at a dealer that a friend of my mom works. they want $18,000 but i'm hoping to get it for about $14,000. i think i can convince the wife to go for it and not worry about getting me a newer truck. we'll see.

we spotted a schweet 1966 ford mustang the other day. rebuilt 302, c-4 automatic, new paint, new brakes, new interior, new rims, new tires. it was medium metallic blue with black interior. awesome car. the owner told me he had it up to 120mph and was surprised to see how tight the body was. this would be the only car that i (and my wife) might settle for something "lesser" in a ford explorer. she actually mentioned it to me first. i was very surprised.

other than that, today was pretty mellow. :)

peace, spudwrench


web log - saturday, july 27, 2001

day 13. kinda makes you wish i'd miss a day or something, don't it? :p

it was a fairly boring day today.

we went for a long walk this morning, hoping it would get something started. it was about 1 to 1-1/4 miles long. downhill one way, uphill all the way back. no such luck. we're gonna start taking walks everyday until it actually happens. the wife is now stating, for the record, that "she's done." i hope it happens soon. she's really uncomfortable.

oh, got a haircut. nice and short for summer. :)

we went to look at another 1996 ford explorer. a stripped down version with some minor problems. the lady at the dealership was quite nice. it looks like the 1995 ford explorer that we found the other day might end up being the one. we'll see what happens.

after dinner we ended up coming home and watching "102 dalmations". not the greatest movie in the world, but it was cute and entertaining enough. if for no other reason than the sad acting. ouch. but it's a kid flick, i guess that would be asking too much.

i also updated my music video list again. you can also get to it via my music page.

i still haven't been able to get hold of my buddy. i've been trying to get him to help me with the firewall that is on the box between my computer and the internet. if i can get him, i'll be able to get the ftp working that i wanted to start. and, possibly, host the internet radio station that i, occationally, broadcast on. i usually broadcast around 10pm - 11pm pst. if you get the chance, check it out. you'll need a player that can play streaming audio. i'd recommend winamp, but i know that a bunch of other programs out there will work. have fun and thanks for listening. :)

peace, spudwrench


web log - friday, july 26, 2001

day 12. with no end in sight. :)

i didn't go to work today because... we had a false alarm. yep, my wife thought her "water" might have "broken". so we called the doctor's office and they sent us to the hospitol for a labor check. about an hour after we got there, they told us it was a false alarm and to go on home and take a walk. dang. on one side, i'm glad it didn't actually happen. i was really nervous that this "might be it" and that i'd actually have to watch and help my wife through a rather painful experience. on the other hand, i'm wondering if it ever will happen. i really want this "wait" to be over. i want to see my baby daughter. i want to hold her in my arms and mumble silly nonsense into her face. i know i'll get there and i know i'll do ok during the birth. i'm just getting tired of the wait and being on pins and needles because of it.

so... we drove "over the hill" to look for a newer "mom car". some quick background... highway 17 (between santa cruz and los gatos) is known as "the hill". basically because it is a mountain highway that is known for it's fairly high accident rate. driving "over the hill" is a fairly major event when you are a new driver. anyway, we only got to two (!!!) dealers and looked at two (!!!) cars because the salespeople just kept trying to sweet talk us into something we didn't want. for the record, i hate high pressure salespeople. emphasis on "hate". >:( we finally walked out of the last dealership because they kept trying to get us into something brand new. i think i'm gonna just find something locally. then i can almost look for it at my leisure.

we ended up going out to dinner with my wife's mom. i like my mother-in-law. she's got some spunk and won't take any lip from dad. but, since dad is away in lake tahoe for a weekend of golf, we just decided to go out to dinner and put it on the credit card. it was a nice mexican dinner. good stuff.

peace, spudwrench


web log - thursday, july 26, 2001

day 11. it just keeps going and going and going. :)

pretty boring at work today. same stuff, different day. yada yada yada.

no baby yet. the wife's had no contractions yet. not necessarily a good thing. this really needs to get moving forward, bigtime. she's already 8 days late and the doctor ain't gonna let her go beyond 12... 14 tops. and we don't want to force it either, like i said a couple days ago. for the first time, literally, i'm getting a little nervous. i want this to go as smooth as possible. let's just say it was a quick road, once we decided to stop preventing it. but up until then, it took a while. and any "complications" are just gonna add more baggage to the pile.

we went and looked at a few cars at the local dealers. we found a nice 1996 toyota 4runner... but it was only 2wd. we found a nice 1995 ford explorer... but it's a little too old. we found a couple other nice toyotas... but these dealers thought that they should ask over $7000 more than the first dealer. not. i hate looking for cars. i can never find what i want, fast enough. sure, if i had a month, i could find something close. but most of these aren't even close. dang. :(

for the record, i added a list of all my music videos to the music page. check it out, if you want.

peace, spudwrench


web log - wednesday, july 25, 2001

day 10. still going strong. aren't i special?? :)

work was really boring today. i spent most of my time cruising the web. i did have a couple real computer problems but nothing that i couldn't fix in a 1/2 hour. everyone is very patient about getting their computers "fixed" since there basically was no one to do so before me. i even left a few minutes early.

woohoo!!! progress!!! heidi is currently "proceeding" along. the lack of symptoms have stopped or, in other words, she's showing signs of definately getting close. the doctor made another appointment for next monday, but stated that he didn't think she'd make it that far. so, the clock is basically running. at any moment, this page may skip a day or three while we have (i.e. she has) a baby. i'm so stoked!!!

we bought a baby stroller tonight. dang, talk about expensive. almost $200. ouch. but we didn't want a used one since we wouldn't know who (or what) was in and all over it. better safe than sorry. blah blah blah. anyway, i spent about 1-1/2 hours putting it together and getting everything adjusted. it's a pretty ingenious design as far as how it goes together. snap, snap, snap, snap... snap and it's done. i hardly had to read the manual. :)

my life is kinda on hold right now. i'm totally focused on being able to support my wife through this delivery. i'm more than willing to drop everything at work and leave. in fact, i've told them that i'll be taking about 4 days off (standard paternity leave stuff) and then taking an additional 5 or 6 half-days off. i'll make the call when i'm actually there but i'm not gonna even try to get right back to work. it's not like they're gonna just fire me. trust me, i'm doing this and they aren't gonna do a thing about it. my job is (and the people that i work with are) so cool. i wish everyone enjoyed their job as much as i enjoy mine. lucky me. :)

peace, spudwrench


web log - tuesday, july 24, 2001

day 9. wow. i thought i would have flailed by now and missed a day... or given up all-together. go figure.

no baby yet. my wife has another appointment tomorrow with the doctor. hopefully something's going on. i really don't want her to need to be "induced" into labor. from what i've heard (and it's more than i ever wanted), it just plain sucks. it's hard on the doctor (he really needs to pay attention), hard on the mom (umm... can you say "pain"?), hard on the dad (he has to deal with everybody) and, definitely, hard on the kid (ever had a big person try to shove you through a little space, other than actually being born?). not fun. we'd both rather do it the old-fashioned way. with some nice drugs on the side, please.

finally got that stupid network talking to itself again. seems that both computers needed the exact same network card, the exact same drivers (from the manufacturer, not microsoft) and the exact same settings for the irq and i/o port. what type of rinky-dink piece of junk setup is that?? i am very glad that i didn't originally set that thing up. at least i won't have to deal with the old man anymore.

dad's been busy replacing some of the rotten siding on our house, after taking the 2 foot brick fascia off. not really bad but enough to require actually doing it. he already has marks around the front of the house as to where the new porch is going to be located. we should be able to get started fairly soon.

i got hold of a 10GB/ATA66 drive the other day. i'm downloading all of my mp3 cds onto it. both for being able to play whatever i want, whenever i want and to be able to set up a ftp server for them on my machine. i just downloaded warftp and will be installing it after i finish with the mp3 cds the ftp server will have *no* anonymous access enabled (plus it's behind a decent linux-based firewall), so don't even ask. it is mainly to see if i can actually set this thing up and to connect to other ftp sites (via command line on the other, linux box). i hope it works.

i've been trying to find any ebooks that i can lately. i do have a small selection that i've accumulated over the last year or so. probably around 100 books, mostly science fiction with some computer books thrown in for good measure. i've specifically been looking for the ad&d books for a friend, which i wouldn't also mind having. The server that i was trying to connect to appears to be down for the next month. i do hope that it comes back online.

peace, spudwrench


web log - monday, july 23, 2001

day 8. and then there was none. not to worry. i've simply started an archive to keep this page fairly clean. the link is at the bottom of the page.

heh... things got a little crazy in the internet radio station's irc channel last night. a couple of the guys, from time to time, like to echo what one of the owners "says". after about 5 minutes, it got old. after 10 minutes (and about 2500 words), it was very annoying. so i left. complain about me all you want but i don't hang out in a chat room just to get flooded with gibberish. sorry folks.

...and so it begins again. a new week to get frustrated with my users. gotta love that. not. don't worry. some how, some way, they'll manage to piss me off. but i never explode at them directly. oh no. i just go home, sit in front of my computer and play ut for a couple hours and get all my frustrations out without harming a living soul. aren't computer games awesome?

i didn't do a whole lot today at work. there just weren't many tough problems to solve today. plus i'm keeping my work load light, just in case the baby decides to make an appearance.

actually left work an hour early today. started to get a gnarly headache. now, compared to some people i know, i have had next to zero headaches in my life. but that's part of the problem. the other part is that i have a rather high tolerance to pain. so, if i get a headache and it bugs me enough to feel like headache, it's a gnarly headache. and since i never get them to begin with, it's really a problem for me. i think i've had about 2 dozen headaches in my life. and that's over 30 plus years. call me a wimp if you want but getting a headache for me just plain sucks. fortunately, a couple of excederin and a short nap later, the headache was almost gone. lucky me.

nope, still nothing happening with the baby. my wife has another appointment on wednesday. hopefully they'll discover that she's "making progress". if not, it's either long walks on the beach or up to a friend's house (and his trampolene). ouch. :p

i was fortunate enough to get a couple e-mails from a really good (and long time) friend of mine today. he moved about 450 miles south about a month ago. and you know what... i really miss him. it never really sank in until today (and right now, just writing about it). i miss the fun and laughs we had. we had finally been working at the same place for about a year too. now, i can't blame him. he and his lovely wife had a *fabulous* opportunity to move down south and start something really awesome. and i would have hurt him badly if he didn't take that opportunity just because of silly ol' me. so, please allow me to say this once (and only once)... i love you, man.

peace, spudwrench