We had a good xmas here. Got some good stuff, had a nice lazy day at home... Then we went to the in=laws in MD for the weekend to do the xmas thing there. Overall it was a good weekend. I got an ecosphere - pretty cool. its a totally self-contained ecosystem, all it needs is some indirect sunlight and that's it. It contains everything needed to sustain life in one sealed glass sphere.

Went to see Lord of the rings today.... good movie. I definitely recommend it to anyone. They did an excellent job on this one.

Yahoo! News - Team to Try and Re-Enact First Flight

Yahoo! News - Team to Try and Re-Enact First Flight

Today being the 100th anniversary of the wright brothers first flight, they are trying to reproduce it... i hope its successful!

Nothing special going on the last few days.... Finished the kitchen floor, now the kitchen looks much better. I spent some time yesterday re-designing KaosKidd's train layout to be a little more practical. I think I came up with a pretty good solution. I'm hoping to get back to mine soon, maybe I'll start working on it in the evening after work. Who knows... We'll just have to wait and see. It's raining here today, snowing in northern parts, but rain here. Go figure. We spent most of the day just being lazy.. You need to have a lazy day once in a while. I'm waiting till 7 when the battlestar galactica mini series is being re-shown on sci-fi. I'm gonna tape it. I can't wait to see what they do with the new series. I heard a rumor that the scifi channel is gonna remake the battelstar galactica series. I sure hope it's true. I loved that show.

Looks like Saddam is in custody as of yesterday. It's about time they tracked him down. I was beginning to think he might actually be dead (not necessarily a bad thing).

What a week.. put in nearly 30 hours by tuesday night. I'm worn out already and just want to sleep.. ugh, at least i can take tomorrow off and sleep late. Hopefully I should have the kitchen floor done satirday so I can scratch that project off my to do list. Still have more home improvement projects on my list but i am getting there slowly but surely.

We decided to join the online music revolution. No more buyng CDs for just one song. we're now buying them one song at a time as we want them. Makes more sense really. Why spend $16 for a CD when we can spend .99 a track for the 2 we actually want to hear. SHould prove interesting to see how well it works out.

We're getting closer to getting our little girl. We're waiting for our invitation from Russia then we make the first trip. Should be some time in Jan. I think.......

I'm an UNCLE!!!!

Yup, you read that right.. My sister gave birth yesterday to a 7lb 10oz baby girl!


On another note, spent the weeked re-doing my kitchen floor, looks much better than that tired out linoleum.

Another long week (yes i know its only wed. ) well, we're that much closer to getting our adoption officially underway. the last of the paperwork went out today, now we wait for the invitation from Russia to come visit our little girl. Tomorrow should be fun, we're having the folks, and some relatives over for Turkey Day, so we get to clean the house tonight.. yay! ugh! Should be a good day anyway. Happy turkey-Day to all!

It's a girl!

yup, we finally got a referral... her name is Ekaterina. She's a 15 month old from Russia, should be going to visit her in a couple of weeks, then we wait for our court date for the adoption!

Yahoo! News - 8 WTC Memorial Design Finalists Unveiled

Yahoo! News - 8 WTC Memorial Design Finalists Unveiled

i think the article says it all. good designs, i like inversion of light myself....

you gotta check this out!

decided to do more work on the safari rack toady so I got a sheet of plastic latttece, my dremel, and a screw shooter and went to town, now I have a deck that i can place anything I want up there with.

ugh! what a week... work had been a nightmare, i'm spending more time troubleshooting bank errors than anything else. On the plus side, the adoption is moving forward. I'm just waiting on one or 2 more documents and we're ready to get a referral.

Went through the paragon pics from October and did some cropping finally. I'm re-uploading the pictures as I type this. It looks like the adoption from Russia is gonna happen real soon. We're just waiting on some paperwork before we can move forward.

Its been a fun week.. my trip to boston got cancelled, so I'm not going. On the plus side, a few guys we met at Paragon the last trip are organizing a ride in south NJ that weekend, so I can go... The adoption is going pretty smoothly, just a few pieces of paperwork left to finish. We turned the house phone off today... no more telemarketers.. yay!

Yahoo! News - FCC Wants to Fine AT&T Over 'Do Not Call'

Yahoo! News - FCC Wants to Fine AT&T Over 'Do Not Call'


YES!!!!!

Weekend in Maine

Had a great trip to maine... the weather was nice, held out for my sister's wedding. It was a nice wedding, held on the steps of a historical site. The trip wasn't bad either - about 7 hours. We hit rain on the way back and ended up getting stuck in rush hour traffic in north jersey as a result.

Yahoo! News - Rebels Attack; Int'l Groups Bolt Baghdad

Yahoo! News - Rebels Attack; Int'l Groups Bolt Baghdad


This is truly a sad story.. the iraqis are bombing the very people who are trying to help them survive.... the red cross, doctors across borders, etc... terrorists are a bigger enemy to their own people than to foreign governments and the biggest cowards on the planet.

Shock Wave from Sun Hits Earth's Magnetic Field

Yahoo! News - Shock Wave from Sun Hits Earth's Magnetic Field

Paragon was a blast! we logged over 50 miles on the trail. There are pictures online under hobbies - offroad - paragon2. I have a few mpegs too that I will put online once i get a chance to edit them and convert them. We hit everything from a green 1 to a green 3. I got stuck once, had to use the hi-lift to free myself. Overall we had a blast, My wofe drove for a bit on saturday - that's her in the mud hole - i took the pictures. We made some friends while we were there and are hoping that we will get to wheel with them again sometime.

Good reason not to buy an H2

Tomorrow we head to paragon park for a weekend off-road. Should be a blast.. looks like we have 4 stockers in our group, and like 20 modifieds. I know i'm gonna have fun. Hopefully the weather will be good as well.

THink i found my recovery point....

ZJ Radiator Support/Tow Point

this looks like a winner.. better than tow hooks cause it pulls both sides of the frame......

Kind of a slow day at work today.. went out & got new front brakes for the car - will change them tonight.... fun fun fun...

Well, we're pulling the plug on the phone soon... we're going entirely wireless.. the home phone gets shut off and we will be only using the cell phones. We upgraded our plan to add extra minutes and that included long distance as well so we should break even or save a few bucks on this....

We went to gettysburg over the weekend for our anniversary... it was pretty cool. We stayed at a B&B and saw the sights... they had an apple festival while we were there so we went to it. I found a piece of slate with a wolf picture on it that i just had to have.. got a pretty neat belt too....

Why you should never 4-wheel alone!

CNN.com - Teenager pinned under vehicle uses jack to free himself - Oct. 9, 2003

Got the safari rack on & painted yesterday.. it looks REAL good all black... :)

Having a real crazy week.. looks like we're doing a russian adoption instead of guatemala.. getting the paperwork in order. And work has been nuts. I'm settig up a custom bank reconciliation to interface our bank files and our payroll generated files (with help) and it is working.. just alot of back records to import...

XP is Ok... i dont see what all the hype is aboutt though.... doesn't do anything that 2000 didn't and 2000 let you do more....

I decided to blow my computer up today and install XP... should be fun....

New tiers..

Just got the new tires put on the jeep.. 30x9.5" Pirelli Scorpion A/T - real good tire, same as I had on the truck. My speedometer is accurate now, imagine that....

I added a safari rack to the jeep yesterday.. I built it from PVC pipe, cost less than $45 to make. there are pics in the photo galleries. Check 'em out if you have the time.

I hate programmers that don't test stuff thoroughly before releasing the new version.. came across a BIG bug in our payroll software.. ugh!

Order my tires for the Jeep yesterday.. 30X9.5 Pirelli Scorpion A/T's. Should have them sometime next week. I'm settling with the insurance co for the truck friday, should be a decent figure, but not as much as i think i should have gotten for it. If I ever get hit again, i'm having it towed to my house, I'm pulling everything off of it that I added, then calling the insurance.

Jeep Buried at Kink

iB::Topic::Jeep Buried at Kink

you gotta see this! ouch!

new site changes

I was running out of room for my photo galleries so i found a service (free.prohosting.com) that allows 50MB of web space for free... there are popups but any popup blocker will take care of these. So now all the photo galleries are moved over there (13MB of photos) and the videos are moved from Kaoskidd's site to mine... Thanks for the loan of web space KK..... I think all the links are OK, but will find out more as time progresses....

Yahoo! News - Space Elevator: High Hopes, Lofty Goals

Yahoo! News - Space Elevator: High Hopes, Lofty Goals

This is a must read! this may be reality before you think!

It's official

the Jersey Devil is toast..... i'm just waiting for them to make me an offer now...

INSURANCE COMPANIES SUCK!!!

i spent 3 hours on the phone this morning dealing with the other guys insurance.. first I'm told that I am responsible for the storage fee on my truck, so i start calling lawyers... then i call back and get someone else and they say "sure, we'll cover the storage fee". Someone needs to be shot! this is rediculous.. the good thing is they are looking at the truck tomorrow and I'll finally find out if they think it is fixable or totalled... ugh!

took the jeep out yesterday to test it without the sway bar connected - never got the chance to unhook... by the time i got somewhere to try it, it was pouring so i went home,...:(

i'm changing the diff fluids today, hopefully that will quiet the rear axle down some.....

what a day.. the second anniversary of the terrorist attack on the US. I can hardly believe that 2 years ago today I watched the twin towers fall. I sat there wondering if we were at war on our home soil. Wondering if the next bomb to go off was the nuclear power plant less than 10 miles from where I live. I thought this was appropriate..... A dad's Poem

I have a headache.. nothing wants to cooperate today. It is just one of those days.. on the bright side, I do have quite a few new changes made on the work web site. At lease that is cooperating with me.

I cant wait till this weekend - I want to take the jeep out and disconnect the sway bars and see just how much that gets me as far as flex goes.. Should be good for an inch or 2. Whatever it gets me has to be better than the stock flex from this thing. the front end is pretty tight.

Last night i had a bit of a scare... the jeep made this horrible grinding/scraping/rattle from the rear.. it sounded like it was coming from the driver side wheel - it was. I pulled the wheel to find an interesting brake configuration. THe jeep has 4 wheel disc brakeds, but the emergency brake is a drum brake inside the rear rotor. from the looks of things, nobody ever checked them because there was "old" rust on them.. not the fresh, i just used the brakes kind of rust.. the pads were totally disintegrated, the drier side must have just fallen apart yesterday and the pieces of the brake shoe was what i was hearing. the passenger side looks like it fell apart a long time ago by the rust on the metal backing (where shoes are supposed to be attached but are missing). ugh! looks like a brake job this weekend. that would explain why i have no emergency brake!

I installed quick disconnects last night on the jeep's front sway bars... Hopefully it will get me some more flex on the trail....

Karayzee day at work today....

man was it nuts.. I've been swamped since i started the day out.. on the plus side, i gave the office website amajor overhaul today...

The jeep runs pretty good on & off-road.. I got a rattle in it last night that felt like i was dragging a branch or something.. can't find any obviously loose parts (except the plastic front bumper - missing the clips that hold the bottom). I'll figure it out yet.

tried a set of 30x9.5x15 tires on the jeep - it was geared to tires that size, the speedometer is corrrect with the larger tires. Took the jeep out for a test run today - pics in the off-road section.

New Truck...

Just bought a Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo... 1995 but in decent condition, so I"m mobile again! yay!

Life sucks... i'm real sore in my neck... I had to call around to find a doctor that will handle auto insurance.. ugh! my family doctor refuses to see me because it is an auto claim. Looks like I may be looking at Jeeps as a replacement unless I can find another Mazda like what I had....

Pics are up

I posted pics of the wreck and the tennessee trip in the albums on the main site under Hobbies - Off-road.

Tennessee trip

Had a good trip to Tennessee - pictures to be posted soon. Unfortunately, the return trip wasn't so good. I got rear-ended and my truck was totaled! that sucks!

New Menus Added!!!

I just re-did the menus on the site. Please let me know if there are any broken links....

Tooo funny! I just had to post this...

Below is an actual letter sent to a bank. The bank manager thought it amusing enough to have it published in the New York Times.


Dear Sir:

I am writing to thank you for bouncing my check with which I endeavoured to pay my plumber last month. By my calculations, three nanoseconds must have elapsed between his presenting the check and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honour it. I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my entire salary, an arrangement which, I admit, has only been in place for eight years.

You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity,and also for debiting my account $50 by way of penalty for the inconvenience caused to your bank. My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to rethink my errant financial ways.


I noticed that whereas I personally attend to your telephone calls and letters, however, when I try to contact you I am confronted by the impersonal, overcharging, pre-recorded faceless entity that your bank has become.

From now on I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh-and-blood person. My mortgage and loan repayments will, therefore and hereafter, no longer be automatic but will arrive at your bank by check addressed personally and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom you must nominate. Be aware that it is an offence under the Postal Act for any other person to open such an envelope. Please find attached an Application Contact Status which I require your chosen employee to complete. I am sorry it runs to eight pages but in order that I know as much about him or her as your bank knows about me there is no alternative.

Please note that all copies of his or her medical history must be countersigned by a Notary Public, and the mandatory details of his/her financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) must be accompanied by documented proof.

In due course, I will issue your employee with a PIN number, which he/she must quote in dealings with me. I regret that it cannot be shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have modeled it on the number of button presses required to access my account balance on your phone bank service. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.


Let me level the playing field even further. Press buttons as follows:

1.- To make an appointment to see me.
2.- To query a missing payment.
3.- To transfer the call to my living room in case I am there.
4.- To transfer the call to my bedroom in case I am sleeping.
5. -To transfer the call to my toilet in case I am attending to nature.
6.- To transfer the call to my mobile phone if I am not at home.
7.- To leave a message on my computer, a password to access my computer is required. Password will be communicated at a later date to the Authorized Contact.
8.- To return to the main menu and to listen to options 1 through 7.
9.- To make a general complaint or inquiry. The contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my automated answering service. While this may, on occasion, involve a lengthy wait, uplifting music will play for the duration of the call.

Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new arrangement.

May I wish you a happy, if ever so slightly less prosperous New Year?

Your Humble Client

What a week!

Spent alot of time re-working stuff at the office. The website got a new look and should go live sometime soon.

On the plus side, we're making a trip to Tennessee tomorrow to go Off-road.. Should be lots of fun!

We have air conditioning finally! no more window units, we have central air... much better.... got the basement cleaned up some today too... If we can find a futon or small couch to put downstairs we'll have a rec-room too...:)

Editorial Archive :: When will you stop slaying the innocents? :: The Independent Voice of Iraq - IRAQ TODAY

Editorial Archive :: When will you stop slaying the innocents? :: The Independent Voice of Iraq - IRAQ TODAY

A really good article....

Had a decent weekend - went to Kyllyan's office picnic on saturday.. typical office picnic. They had it at a park in south NJ. Spendt SUnday emptying out the trailer and washing th evehicles for the most part. My parents are getting new carpet so we got the old carpet for the basement. whet the heck - it is free. Looks like we may be getting their couch too.

Working on a friday

blah... its friday and I'm in the office.. this sucks.. i'm tired and just want to take a nap!

Life is going a little smoother now.. we got most of the clothes put away from the trip... Still have to unload the gear from the trailer.. probably will get to it Friday. The truck seems to be braking OK though the ABS was acting up when we changed the master cylinder. Looks like we failed the water test due to low Ph so I have to get the conditioner serviced (its overdue anyhow) and have it retested before I can get the refinance to go through.. oh well.

Pennsic pictures are up!

Just got the Pennsic pictures up.. check out the Pennsic War 32 gallery under SCA.

True Porn Clerk Stories

True Porn Clerk Stories - Funny reading.... thought you might enjoy it.

Dell Support rules!

We have a 4 hour on-site contract on the main servers.. the new drive was here within 3 hours.. not bad!

Ugh! what a morning - i come back from vacation to find that one of the servers had a drive failure the night i left...I'm glad i have redundant drives set up.....

Yesterday's madness.....

Let's see, the day started out with us waking up to the sound of thunder. There's nothing wise than packing up a wet tent, so we jumped out of bed and made a mad dash to get everything packed before it could get rained on. Then it didn't rain, this should have been an omen.... On the way home there was an accident on the PA turnpike. An 18 wheeler full of lumber lost control, hit the wall, and turned over spreading its load over all 4 lanes of highway. Then a car hit the rubble, jumped the center wall and hit another one head on. We sat for well over an hour as they med-evac'ed people out and cleaned up the mess. When we got to Philly, the master cylinder in the truck went and we lost our brakes. I was able to get the truck to a place off the highway without incident. I canned AAA and they could not locate a towing company that could tow the truck and trailer.. Who would figure a tow truck doesn't have a ball hitch??? I had to call PAsmokeater to come get the trailer and get it home along with my wife while I waited for the tow truck. I didn't get home with the truck till after 11:30 last night. We left at noon... It should only have taken around 7 hours to get home. Not a fun day. Today I get to change the master cylinder... Oh yay.

Just got in a littl while ago.. ugh! what a trip.. I'll go into details tomorrow.. i need sleep!

War!

Greetings from war! the official head count is now 10764.... Just a few people here. The weather is drying out some, the parking lot is still closed due to mud... ugh! I guess its a good thing that we are not leaving for a few days yet. Right now it is sunny and warn... overall a nice day. The East Kingdom just took the fort in 7.5 minutes WOOHOO!!!

Greetings to those who couldn't make it... if you are thinking of cancelling due to the weather, don't! it's pretty nice out here. I'll post lots of pics sometime next week.

That's it for me today.. more news to come at a later date.

Pennsic War part 1

Yes, I am posting this from war! Hopefully I won't have to do this too often, but here I am. It has been raining off and on since we got here friday afternoon, a little soggy at the moment, but not too bad! Rumor has it there are over 9500 people here so far. This is going to be a big week I think. I'm going to have lots of pictures to post when I get back..... Later for now.

My next posting will be either from war or after it... .see everyone when I get back...

Yahoo! News - Saddam Allies Raise Bounty on Americans

Yahoo! News - General: Saddam Allies Raise Bounty on Americans

Lovely... just what we need.. more lunatics out to kill americans!

Pennsic Weather

Pennsic Weather is looking pretty rainy.... Hopefully it won't be too terribly wet.

<...turningtables...>

<...turningtables...>

This is another good iraqi blog..... Appears to be written by a US soldier.

24 hours to war!

That's right.... 24 hours from now I'm off to War... Pennsic War that is.. And since it looks like i may need to work while there, when I do get online, I'll post with news of the war happennings as I can. Looks like its a Muddsic this year. Haven't actually seen any reports from war yet, but the forecast is definitely looking wet. Oh well, last one was 10 years ago, guess I can't complain too much, and this trip around I have canvas, not nylon, so we'll be staying dry. Hope to have loads of pictures when we get back, many digital for immediate posting...:)

On the work front, things are still a nightmare, but there's not too much that I can actually do about it today, so we just have to see how it all pans out next week I guess. ugh!

Ugh! what a day.... Spent a good portion of it dealing with the mess that fleet bank made... I can't wait till my vacation gets here. I definitely need it!

Code amber banner

just added the code amber alert banner to the page.. what the heck.. it can't hurt, right?

Another lovely morning in southern NJ... Now if the rain would stop at Pennsic things would be better... Although they are predicting an end to the rain by tuesday which will be good... I am still thinking Muddsic.....

I really hate fleet bank!

They are making life a living hell for us at the office..... We had to stay late tonight to make sure everyghing was going to go through... argh!

FLEET BANK SUCKS!!!!

If you have money at fleet bank - do us all a favor and move it to another bank. They are a bunch of morons.. They care nothing about their customers, and even less about their customers clients... They deserve to go bankrupt and will never get any of my money!

I'm not done yet!

Still more changes to the site..... I'm getting there but not quite done yet....

New style sheets!

I spent a good part of the morning re-designing the style sheets so that the blog page is now the same look as the rest of the site... looks pretty good to me.

Well, I'm almost ready to go to Pennsic - got the new table top stained, made a collapsiblw set of shelves, Now I'm going to try the table out with the newimproved table legs... I added 1/8" steel bars to the top of the legs to keep the table top from wanting to bend at the hinge (due to leverage). They attach with 2 wingnuts, nice & simple. Looks like I may have to work while on vacation.. i just hope I can do all that I need to do remotely and not have to drive all the way back home and miss a few days of my vacation.. that would suck! Well, I'm off to the parents house to check out the improvements...

Oh, we're having a birthday get together for the friends tonight - I just went and picked up the cheesecake.. yum!

I hate fleet bank!

what a bunch of morons.. they can't tell the difference between money coming in and money going out.. idiots!

Crazy day at the office

What a day.... barely had time to think let alone get anything done... Hopefully tomorrow i can get some things accomplished... argh!

Baghdad Blogger

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Baghdad Blogger

Just some interesting reading on Iraq that I came across this morning.

Pennsic weather

weather.com - Local Weather Page

Local weather for Pennsic - looks like it might be another Muddsic this year.....:(

What a crazy day I had yesterday... I walked into the office to find problems, and I didn't slow down till it was time to go to bed. It was just one thing after another with no letting up. Hopefully today is going to be a little slower.. On the bright side, it looks like the new tabletop for camping is nearing completion. Now I just have to make a set of collapsible shelves for Pennsic. We bought some rugs for camp too... Hope it works out for us.

Had a good B-day.... got to eat 2 icecream cakes and had lasagna for dinner... life is good!

Birthday

Happy Birthday to me...

Happy Birthday to me...

Happy Birthday to me...

Today is my birthday - my wife sent me flowers! How often do you see that?

Just got back from a good weekend camping at Southern Region War Camp (an SCA event). On the way there i got a call from my boss telling me he was giving me a raise.. what a birthday present! Had a good weekend, weather was nice, got a chance to get some archery practice.. on top of that we met some friends that live here in town... way cool!

New blog look & feel

Spent some time over the last few days re-designig the look of this page. I think it's much smoother than what was there before. More changes to come.

Titles work!

Cool.. now I can title my posts if I want to. :)

Can we see the title on this?

testing to see if the title works

Another fun morning in computer-land... Got up this morning to 2 messages from the backup server telling me that the database server was not responding.. so here I am at work at 7:30am to fix it.. ahh the joys of being the IT dept.

Looks like I may be doing the refinance after all. It should save me some money every month and that is always a good thing. Of course I pay for it in interest in the long term but, what can you do? Did some more editing to the blog page, including adding a section for other interesting blogs as I find them. Dear_Raed is definitely an interesting blog - right from downtown baghdad. YOu can read stuff here that the papers won't print. Definitely recommended reading. Heard from my (is it second) cousin from down south. He's researching the family tree, hopefully he has some info on the Irvine side that I don't have.

Had a hacker this morning when i got to the office - shut him down real quick... i hate those losers!

OK, the mortgage may not be such a good thing - the teaser rate was a negative amortization payment.. its actually 5.119% - still better than my present loan. GRR!!! i dont know why they present it as if it was a lower interest rate, not a lower payment.. i dont want to owe more in a year than I did when i started...GRR!!!!

Added a message board to the blog page.. pretty cool...:)

Looks like the refinance is going through. Just need to get a few questions answered and then I'll be happy. Should save some money this way.

Got into a nice chat on jeepz.com last night - hope to do it again.

Just updated the photo albums with pics from the last Pines run. Check 'em out. Pine Barrens Runs

I even got stuck... Click Here

Just had a good trip in the pines... I got stuck - which is rare...

I decided to buy taillight guards because I am sick of replacing the darn things... would you believe nobody makes them to fit my truck??? ARGH!

Dr. Koop-Masturbation Can Prevent Prostate Cancer, Study Claims


OK, just too funnny not to look at.. hey Honey, look at this article for me.....lol

If you haven't checked it out yet - go to http://irvinefamily.org - this is our new home and will never change. Yes, the site is currently still at comcast.net, but if we decide to change ISP, the irvinefamily.org address will always point to the current home page location. Basically, it is a redirector to our live web site.

We will also be getting irvinefamily.org email addresses to go along with this. Once that is active, we will be changing our return addresses to the new ones - which will also never change. yay! they will always forward to our currently active email addresses. Who knows, yahoo may or may not be a permanent thing.

AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!! Ok, I feel better now.... my phone has been ringing off the hook.. it must be a full moon.

Just registered irvinefamily.org - If all works the way i hope, that will be the new (and permanent) home for our web page and email addresses. If we change ISP again, our web page link will never change. yay! and best of all it only cost $8.50 a year.

looks like the adoption thing is not going well. the government put all new adoptions on hold till they get the new rules in place. We could be waiting for months before we see any new progress. China & Russia are the only alternatives and they require at least a 2 week stay overseas and on tiop of that russia is so corrupt that i would not trust it to work.

Blah, crazy day today... lots of little problems and stupid people. the day started out nice and calm bu that didn't last very long.

I'm just testing a new blog tool - i can post to the blog without going on the web site.....:)

I re-did the wedding pictures into galleries off the main site - check them out!

Just re-did the 4x4 photo galleries - new selection of pics and they are now arranged in an album!

Not too much happening recently - working on revising the photo libraries. Not too much else happening this week.

Made some big changes to the web site last night - added a javascript menu to the top of the Wulf's Den and will be adding on to th rest of the site as well as soon as I get the chance.

We had another great weekend. Went to a friend's BBQ on friday and then to the fireworks. Ths fireworks display was the largest I've seen there yet I was definitely impressed. Afterwards, pasmokeater and his girlfroend stayed over and e went off-road on saturday. My wife actually drove the truck off-road. this is an accomplishment, as it is stick shift and she isn't very fond of a stick. She did real good with it and may actually want to do it again. YIPPEE! I finally got her to do it, now she can enjoy in some of the excitement of driving off-road when we go.

Just got back from a great camping trip - aside from the 2 accidents and major traffic backups that turned a 4 hour drive into a 5 hour one, it was pretty good. We found 3 geocaches in maryland while were there, and made some new friends. The best part of the trip was the hawk that visited us - i got to within 10 feet of it and snapped some pictures. way cool! even got some feathers as a souvenir.

Man, who cranked up the heat??? weather channel says its 90 out with a heat index of 99! It is supposed to cool off tomorrow night so the weekend should be pretty good. I'm looking forward to going camping without rain for once... That would be a good thing. We are going to Maryland to camp. We plan on hittig some geocaches while we are out there too.

Life si good - we are looking at refinancing the house - maybe getting 1.8%......

Had a good weekend - went to a geocaching picnic saturday and met siome nice people - logged a few caches too. Had to pull my cache out - turns out a new had just been placed nearby and ewas too close to mine.... :( oh well.

Not much else of interest happening right now. Thinking of refinancing the house - might was well with the rates as low as they are. Meeting with a mortgage rep tonight to see what the possibilities are.

Had a couple of crazy days at work so far this week. At least the weather is looking better than it was.

More rain today.. supposed to rain tomorrow too.. figures. I placed my first geocache today, I founfd a decent spot with a unique landmark so i figured what the heck.... Might as well contribute to the fun....:)

Went to the dentist today. Only one more trip - YAY!

set up pasmokeater on blogger so he can log his off-road trip to Tennessee.....

I decided to do a good thing today.. I joined "Tread lightly". since I believe in leaving things as I found them and want to promote 4-wheeling for everyone, and stop the people who are ruining it for the rest of us.

Looks like the weather is a little nicer today than it has been - that's a good thing. Went off-road yesterday, had some fun - got to try some really tough recovery strategies when one of the guys got really stuck, was fun, but time consuming. Will be adding some new pics to the web site sometime soon in the 4x4 section from yesterday.

Man, what a day - it was non-stop problems at work. I guess it could have been worse - I actually got through it all without too much trouble.

Just got done doing house cleaning. I just love house cleaning... ugh!

Decided to fill the 30 gallon fish tank today, of course I forgot to turn off the feed hose and overfilled it again. I think its time for me to buy a float switch to keep me from doing this again. I had to cleant he basement because the water dripped down through the floor onto the clean clothes. ARGH!

I started playing with paperless office software. works good for gettig rid of the clutter of old bills, etc.

Its been crazy.. i hate the dentist - actually i just hate having to go there.

Cable went out last night - that stunk.. no internet, no TV, nothing for most of the night. Looks like maybe thunder storms tonight, nothing yet though.

OK, whoever the idiot is who said we need more rain needs to be taken out & shot! now they are calling for rain from tomorrow night till monday! GRR!!! we need SUN!!!! how else is my tent supposed to dry out?

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

OK, now I feel better... don't you hate days when the phone just rings off the hook?

Fog... well I guess it is better than rain... looked like it wanted to rain all day yesterday too. I tried posting yesterday - apparently blogger had a hardware failure.. bummer. Supposed to get close to 80 today... wow.

Just added new pictures & video to the 4x4 section of the web site - check it out.

Looks like the cooloer on the front of the truck was a bad idea. the truck overheated within 15 miles.. I guess it was blocking too much air from the engine. Oh well, drop back & punt i guess.

We got rained out - it started raining at 9am and hasn't stopped yet. We packed up and came home. GRRR!!!!!

Looks like rain saturday.. :( we'll make due... We're all loaded up & ready to roll.

Bought a leatherman-like tool today - for $6 how can you go wrong? Well, I'm off to go camping. back in a few days.

Well, got the cap on the truck, got the gear loaded, now I just have to deal with the perishables tomorrow. I'm putting the cooler on the front end now that I have the front receiver. should balance the weight out better. Hopeully the weather holds and is a good weekend. I'm looking forward to camping and some more archery.

Weather forecast is looking better - i was getting worried there. Looks like we should not see too much rain. I guess i need to throw the cap on the truck tomorrow and load up.. yay!

now they're calling for rain saturday sunday and monday... was sun yesterday.... AAAAHHHHH!!! I can't win! Depends on who you ask though, another says saturday only....

Got the Hi-lift mounted inthe pickup bed finally.. cant wait till the next offroad trip....
should be fun - think I may have a few more people to ride with.

i hate long days where nothing cooperates... the day isn't even over and I need a nap. my jaw still hurts from the dentist yesterday. I really wish this weather would make up its mind... rain, rain, and more rain..... the only days we get any sun are during the week - how am I supposed to enjoy a weekend camping when it rains every freaking weekend!

We're # 11 on the adoption list! WooHoo!!! we moved up 2 in the last 2 weeks.....

Welcome to Graewulf's World!