along the journey

Well today is the second day of hot, sunny weather. Praise God. I heard this weekend that we’ve had 10x more rain that Seattle has this year, and the last time we had this rain was sometime in 1972. That’s just nutts. My theory is that the government had enough of the draught last year and decided to do something to the atmosphere to generate rain. Wouldn’t surprise me at this point.

I haven’t been writing a lot lately, things have just been sort of lazy. I was sick last week. And then with all the rain, we really haven’t been very active. We’re finally getting able to take walks after dinner. Caleb loves this time. He’s so inquisitive, picking up anything that catches his eye, trash or not. We often times make it to the playground at either the area park, or the elementary school. He could play for hours. Much longer than us. Perhaps that’s just because we get bored of watching him. Usually while we’re out the Ice Cream truck drives around. Caleb can recognize the tune…. he says Ice Cream Truck. It’s adorable. He usually gets an ice cream if we run into him on our way home, or if he comes down our street. I hollered at Amy for it, but she says it’s part of summer. We went to the State Park last Sunday, I took some pictures. They’re here, the ones with a -t in the name are thumbnails of the bigger ones. I’ve been having problems getting them added to my photo album for some reason, so that’ll have to do for now.

I bleached my hair on Saturday night, it’s evident in the pictures. There are some dark spots still, not sure why it didn’t take in those areas, perhaps the stuff was just too dry. I think it looks good. Mom and Dad has said they like it. More importantly Amy likes it.

Been playing Blogshares lately. My stats are listed on the right hand side over there, not really formatted very prettily, but some guy bought 80 shares of dean-o.org for $125,000/ea. Took my cash up to 10mil - The game is a lot different when you have that much money. I’m still trying to figure it out. What makes it harder is that I don’t really understand the trends…. I just see stocks that have a low stock price compared to what it’s been and usually buy as much. Wait for it to grow, and sell it off.

It’s been a pretty dull week in Lake Wobegon. At work anyway. I’ve had lots of time to just sit and surf the net, but don’t tell my boss that! Tronster is throwing a house party. I still have stuff that I transported from Cross Rythyms he keeps forgetting to get from me. We were all gonna go, but since Calebs sick, it’ll probably just be me. Hopefully I can convince someone to go with me.

Over the past few days I’ve been looking into what it’ll take to provide hosting as well to the repair/training business…. it looks a little involved, but if I just market it to people I’m working with, it shouldn’t become to unmanageable. If it does, I may just have to quit my job. Wee!

Amy just sent me an email from a person in our community who found her blog, not sure if he found mine yet our not, but it’s neat when that kind of thing happens. Makes the world a little smaller place. If you stop by my blog, let me know.

Atkins Diet is going mostly well. I’ve had few people at work ask me if I’m loosing weight, I don’t feel smaller, the scale hasn’t really showed any difference, but this is coming up on the end of week 2. I’ve had 3 diet sodas, and 0 regular sodas. I’ve had some caffeine in the form of unsweetened tea. Amy started making some sugar-free jello, it’s good stuff. The nutrasweet doesn’t seem to tast all that bad since I’m not consuming sugar to compare it to. I cheated a bit on Sunday when we went to the “House of India” for a buffet after church. I had some of their bread, and I’m sure some of the sauces had some starch or something. I didn’t however eat rice, potatos, beans, or pasta. On Monday night when we went to the movies we had a child-size popcorn to split between us, it really didn’t even taste very good.

I’m thinking about visiting Horizons this Sunday, I have to figure out which one Tronster goes to. This weekend Amy probably won’t be going to church since we have to keep Caleb away from other kids and pregnant women. I’ve been wanting to check Horizons out. Maybe I’ll wait until a weekend when Amy can go with me.

Is your computer running slow? Are you constantly frustrated at all the error messages? Do you need assistance purchasing and installing a new scanner, printer, camera? Do you need help figuring out your new gadgets? Is it important to you that the person giving you assistance does so with honesty and integrity, at a reasonable price?

Introducing, my new computer house call service. If you need any assistance with your computer, peripherals, network, I’m the one to call. I’ll come to you. No job’s too small.

Services Provided:
House Calls, Evenings and Weekends
Windows, PC, network installation
Troubleshooting and repair services
Upgrades, repairs, virus removal, lessons, help
Software Installation, troubleshooting,
Peripheral troubleshooting/installation
Palm Pilot setup and configuration

This list is not exhaustive, I can tackle any type of computer problem. For friendly, professional, courteous help in the Baltimore area, give me a call – 443-722-7084, or email me – dean@dean-o.org

To borrow a tactic from Rob, if you read my blog, and are playing Blogshares, I’d be more than happy to gift you some shares. Either email me with BLOGSHARES REQUEST in the subject line, or drop a comment in my comments.

Yesterday a co-worker gave me a pass to see a preview screening of Hollywood Homicide. The new movie, due to be released this Friday. I thought it looked humorous from the previews, but didn’t think I’d get to see it in the theaters at that. Anyway, this has got to be one of the funniest, laugh-out-loud movies I’ve seen in a while. There were a few unbelievable moments, but the movie throughout sold me. The movie didn’t wrap up as cleanly as I hoped it would, left some strings hanging, but that seems to be par for the course with movies I’ve seen recently. I give this movie 5 stars! or 2 thumbs up, what do movies get? Go see it!

I don’t get to read Mat Haughey’s weblog very often, mostly cause at work it’s blocked, and I usually forget at home. Tonight while surfin I came across an article he wrote that I wish I had. Actually I had been thinking of doing the same thing Mozilla: Blogging’s Killer App, in which he lists multiple reasons why using Mozilla is a good idea. There were a few things I hadn’t thought of, and one thing I would have included that he didn’t. To summarize:

• Ad-blocking
• Tabbed Browsing
• Sidebar

Those are the biggest points he makes. To add to it, keyword bookmarks, would be another reason to use it. I’ll explain later on that, for now, just check out Matts article. And then download Mozilla and stop using Internet Explorer!!

Today is my 4th day of my Induction Phase of the Atkins Diet. I’ve given up soda completely. I’ve been drinking over a gallon of water a day. The only down side to that is the number of times I’ve had to pee. Today for lunch, salad, pork chop, a few buttered green beans. Snacking on pork rinds, and ham and cheese rollups. Salsa is low carbs, but I haven’t figured out what to eat it on.

Other than that nothing exciting has really been happening. I helped my dad by a new pc from Circuit City. We ordered it online, and as soon as he got the confirmation page he was off to the store to pick it up. It came out of the stock room as he entered the store. I never realized this was how this worked. I always just imagined that it’d be a day or two before you’d be able to pick it up, like the warehouse would ship to the stores and it’d arrive quicker than had they shipped to your house. But nope. Within the hour. Was very cool.

Amy’s been having terrible back pain since Monday. After almost 12 hours at the ER we were told that it’s just muscular and to treat with ibuprofen and muscle relaxers. Ugh! Today is day 4 of her back pain as well. Our friend Susan watched Caleb for Amy yesterday, today my brothers girlfriend is helping Amy watch him. She says that she’s feeling better than she did yesterday, but is still in pain. I’ve been doing as much around the house as I can to help her and she continuously apologizes for “not being able to do her job”. I can’t convince her that it’s ok not to be able to do these things, especially when you’re not feeling well. I’m able to do them just as easy as she is. I think it’s the fact that I don’t do it nearly as well as her that bothers her. I hate to see her in so much pain. I don’t know what else I can do for her.