Billy Ray Cyrus Concert
Posted on 8 October 2007 | No responses
It’s been a while since my last post, but I just wanted to share an exiting event that I went to on Sunday. I went to a Billy Ray Cyrus mini-concert. This is the first time that I have seen a real celebrity in person. Billy was there to promote Toys for Tots’ 60th Anniversary and Tonka. He only sang four songs, one of them was his most popular and my most favorite–Achy Breaky Heart. We had VIP seating so we sat four rows from center stage. It was well attended and to my surprise, many kids showed up to see Hannah Montana’s dad. I think they were hoping to see Hannah.
New Puppy
Posted on 29 July 2007 | No responses
We picked up our new puppy Friday. The breeder, Five Gems Keeshonden, was located up in Grantsville Maryland. My boss let me off early so I went up with my wife and daughter to pick up Dakota. The breeders live on a dairy farm and they also breed Norwegian Elkhounds. When we got there, the yard was full of dogs, both adults and puppies. Dakota was freshly bathed when we got there. From talking to Marla, another family was traveling from New York to pick up their puppy this weekend as well.Dakota is settling in fine in her crate. It is taking less time than I expected for her to acclimate to her crate. The first night she whined for a while then fell asleep. Sometimes when she was whining, Bear would growl at her as if to day Be Quiet!, kinda funny actually. Bear is still very skittish around the puppy, we expect the will change soon. Well come back, I expect more pictures of the new puppy…
Air Force Graduation
Posted on 30 May 2007 | No responses
I finally got to Colorado Springs, arrived around 11 pm yesterday… 10 hours after I should have. Graduation was awesome. I was glad to be there to see my brothers son graduate from one of the exclusive universities in the nation. The graduation was filled with tradition, military ceremony, and proud moments for an uncle. To see the cadets march into the stadium in perfect form, was just inspiring. To see some of the “celebrations” was quite funny. Then to hear the thunderbirds flying overhead just as the cadets tossed their caps in the air surprised me… And the timing of the flyover was incredible. Which took me by complete surprise.
I was so glad to be there to see the graduation of my nephew. The memory of my brother Doug was very heavy there for me. He would have been so proud of his son, I know Tammie was beaming to see her son graduate, I just wish Mom and Dad could have been there. Dad was admitted to the hospital Sunday for a heart problem. But other than that, it was good to be there, even though it took 18 hours of travel time from the time I left my house to the time I got to the hotel….
Traffic on 95 sucks, but I got wireless
Posted on 29 May 2007 | No responses
I am sitting at BWI waiting on standby because some moron can’t drive and got in a wreck, and every idiot has to look as they drive by on I-95. So I was able to squeeze one hour of driving into two hours and I missed my flight by about 20 minutes, so I get to spend the next 5 hours waiting for the next flight. I hate flying. At least I can get wireless via Boingo.
If I miss standy no real sense in going to Colorado Springs. I would just be there with enough time to get my luggage say Hi/Bye and jump back on a plane. This really sucks.
Graduation is Here
Posted on 26 May 2007 | No responses
The day that we’ve all been waiting for a long time is here. I finally graduated. I walked and received my Bachelor’s degree in Business/Accounting from Liberty University. With the passing of our Chancellor, Dr. Jerry Falwell just days before graduation made graduation even more memorable; one we’ll never forget. There was laughing and crying as they showed a video clip of Jerry’s life. While this graduation is over, I’m certainly looking forward to Amanda’s High School graduation in a few weeks and Erika’s college graduation the year after. I’m looking forward to utilizing my degree with my current employer. However, the most exciting thing that I’m looking forward to is to be able to read my novels instead of textboks. The stack was getting pretty high. Pictures of the graduation are available online.
Hate from left field
Posted on 6 April 2007 | No responses
If this article from the Scripps Howard News Service is how Democrats debate those that do not agree with them, then this country is in deep trouble. I feel sorry for those poor people who had to endure these ad hominem attacks.
It is attitudes like what is portrayed in that article, that make me vote for anyone that is not a Democrat or have a political left leaning. Hate is hate no matter what, and the Gore supporters are showing that they can hate with the best of them.
The dangers of getting the lowest bid
Posted on 30 March 2007 | No responses
My wife and I wanted to build out our basements last year. We contacted a few contractors and asked for bids on the project. The bids ranged from upwards of $20K to under $10K. Being cheap, we took the bid under $10K. First mistake.
We checked the guy’s references, and even visited one of the remodels that he did. My first thought was, and it was later to be proved correct, that he does not give much attention to detail. But I brushed that aside since the room that we saw looked fine, no glaring defects, and we hired the guy. He started In October of 2006 and made great progress… for a few weeks. Then he stopped showing up. No phone calls, nothing. We called him and asked, “Um… where are you?” He had injured his leg shortly before he started on the basement and the doctor told him to take it easy. Ok fine.. the guy has a bum leg.. give him some slack. After about two weeks we called again, he said that he would have his son finish the drywall and that he was still on track to finish by Christmas.
His son arrived around Thanksgiving and did the majority of the drywall… Alright now fast forward to about a week before Christmas. With nothing done since Thanksgiving, we asked for a face to face and inquired about the basement. We were going to be out for Christmas we asked for the house keys back. Well we did not get a face to face but did get the keys back. We should have gotten another contractor but we were concerned that no one would come in after this guy to finish the job.
We contacted him after we got back in town, and gave him back the keys. He insisted that his leg was ok and he was going to finish the basement in short order. Well to make a long story short, he did not restart on the job until almost the end of February, after we called him and said we wanted to talk about whether he was going to finish the job. Almost full month and a half after christmas.
He did not have an eye for finishing details. For example, he did not use any electrical outlet boxes in the builtin entertainment center to manage the 6 speaker wires, two ethernet cables, the cable for the TV and all the wires needed for the subwoofer. Instead he cut two holes in the back and pulled all the wires through. He was going to leave it like that until I pressed him on that issue.
Our basement is finished, but we will never use that contractor again. There are many other items that we were less that pleased with, and in the end we wanted him to finish and hire someone else to “clean up the mess”. We still do not have carpet down, but we hired someone to do that. We also hired another contractor to redo the fireplace. And this contractor did a fantastic job on that. Him we are going to rehire for other odd jobs we need.
From now on I will only hire someone who has a personal recommendation from someone we know, or follow my initial hunch on the work he has completed in the past.
Long Week
Posted on 9 March 2007 | No responses
This week seemed to drag on. It all started when I woke up Sunday morning and began throwing up. It then followed with diarrhea and fever. By Tuesday, everyone in the household had it. It just didn’t seem to go away. It dragged ALL week long. Today, I finally went to the Doctor and he said that everything is going to be fine. I just have to let it run it’s course. I figure after a week, it should be over by now, but I guess not. I sure hope that no one has to experience what I have this week. Let me tell you it is a nasty stomach virus.
I want that job
Posted on 26 February 2007 | No responses
So Saturday the weather and news sites – weather.com, nbc4.com, wusa9.com – were all saying we should get rain with some wintry mix Sunday. Well, we got 6 inches of white fluffy wintry mix that i had to shovel off the driveway. That is right the weather guys all missed that we were getting 6 inches of snow Sunday. I wish I could be in a job where I could be wrong 50% of the time.
There were some big fluffy flakes that came down. Perfect snow for making snowballs and snowmen. It was awesome.
It is going to be a long year.
Posted on 23 February 2007 | No responses
I was watching the morning news today, and an ad for the clerk of court came on. It was a political ad for the Nov 6, 2007 elections. November 2007!!! Geez, it is the clerk of court, who really cares about the clerk of court except for the clerk of court? Why do we have to endure this crap for the next 8 months.
This is going to be a very tiring year. We have all these presidential candidates that are crisscrossing the country 1 year before any state primary. Every speech is filled with enough acrimony to drive the most optimistic person into a deep depression. I am already weary at hearing all the garbage that they all are spewing, but we are going to have to listen to this for more than a year. God help us.