A Work From Home Day

I spent most of the day trying to do my job over a slow dial up line. We took our lunch hour and went to the hospital to visit with my dad. He was sleeping very soundly and we did not wake him. The nurses said he is doing fine and would be up walking later this afternoon.

Back to Arkansas

The more I thought about my dad having surgery today the more I thought that I should be there and be with him. I took a vacation day and spent the day driving back to Little Rock. Mary and I got to the hospital just as they were rolling him to surgery. We got to see him just briefly before surgery. After about an hour the doctor came out and said everything went very well with the surgery.

My Dad Fell and Broke His Hip

Mary called me tonight to tell me that my dad fell and hurt his head and broke his hip. He is in the hospital in Benton. She said they are going to do surgery to repair his hip tomorrow.

I spent most of the evening learning more about Ruby on Rails.

Ruby on Rails

This evening I left the TV off and headed into the unknown world of Ruby. Ruby is a fairly new programming language for the web. Through good old Google I found InstantRails. This allowed me to quickly install Ruby, Rails framework, Apache web server, MySql database, and PHP onto my laptop. I spent the next 3 hours without hardly moving from my chair as I worked my way through the tutorial. This new language is amazingly powerful. It allowed me to develop an application that normally would have taken many nights with other languages. Needless to say I am impressed.

Bad Gas Mileage - Good Gas Mileage

On the way to Little Rock I was pushing pretty hard because I didn't want to get home too late and I only got 28 MPG.

On the way back to Kansas City today I took my time and I got 44 MPG. So it really makes a huge difference how you drive when it comes to getting the best mileage out of a tank of gasoline.

Here is my Honda Fit Gasoline usage spreadsheet updated today:
HondaFitGasUsage.htm

Mowed The Grass

I spent about 5 hours mowing the grass today. It really got hot before I finish mowing.

Tonight we went out with Scott and Laura to eat. We enjoyed a great meat together at Las Palmos Mexican.

Work From Home

Another great work at home day. I'm so glad to be able to work for home today. Mary enjoyed a wonderful evening together.

Return To Arkansas Again

This afternoon I drove the long trip back to Arkansas. I arrived home about 9:30 p.m. Mary was up and waiting for me.

Trying The Audioblogger

I finally tried the voice dialer on my Cingular 8125 PDA tonight. I needed a way to see if it works so I said, "Calling Audioblogger" into my bluetooth headset and this is what I recorded as a result.

Mary Loaded and Headed To Arkansas

Mary left for Arkansas this morning. Her little Kia minivan was loaded to the gills. We are trying to get a head start on our moving. I lined up "Two Men and a Truck" to help with the loading of our stuff on 9-15-2006. I reserved the Penske truck a couple weeks ago so I guess we're all set for moving except, we still have tons of work to do to get packed and ready.

First Day Back At The Sprint Campus

This morning I report to work at the Sprint Campus. This is fourth building I have worked in at the campus and my third time to be moved to the campus. It seems these corporations just can not make up their minds. It's been a real roller coaster ride these past few years. I have worked at the same job but got my paycheck from 3 different companies during the past couple years.

Packing For Our Move To Arkansas

This afternoon we packed a lot of boxes in preparation for our move to Arkansas. Most of our stuff will move to Arkansas. I will keep just enough stuff here in Kansas City to set up house keeping in a studio appartment.

Geocaching Picnic

This evening we helped with the registration at the Kansas City Geocaching Picnic. I think we had something over 140 people show up for the event. We really enjoyed talking to a ton of geocachers from Salina, Kansas, St. Louis, Missouri, Springfield, Missouri and lots of Kansas City folks. This was the biggest geocaching picnic every for the Kansas City area. It was hosted by our good friends, Brian and Carlin Yonke.

Unfinished Business In Fayetteville

We drove down to Fayetteville this afternoon to tend to some business and spent the night in the Sleep Inn. We enjoyed a great steak at the Longhorn Steak House.

My Last Day at Waterside IV in Lenexa

Today we finished packing for the move back to the Sprint Campus for the third time. We are really going to miss this place and the the nice 3 mile walk around Southlakes at noon every day.

Mary drove up from Little Rock today and arrived about 3:30 p.m. We met Robby and Rachael for dinner and really enjoyed our time together.

Ripping MP3's

I spent a lot of time converting some of our CD's to MP3's this evening. I was able to put 14 of our CD's on 1 CD as MP3's. So now I can play 14 CD's in the car on 1 CD. That's nice. I like MP3.

I am using ACE MP3 Ripper from http://www.acemp3.com/

Packing For The Big Move

It looks like we have to move again. It seems this happens every few months now. Friday will be our last day at Waterside IV in Lenexa. We did not want to move there and now we don't want to leave. We moved here as IBM employees. We were converted back to Sprint employees and now we're moving back to the Sprint Campus as Embarq employees. We will really miss the nice 3 mile walk around the Southlakes.

Fox Hollow II Geocache

The Fox Hollow II Cache was one of the nicest short walks I've been on in a while. I really enjoyed the area with it's big rock bluffs and overhangs. It was very cool this evening and made for a very pleasant walk.

A Big Caching Day

This afternoon I had the privilege of caching with Brian and Carlin Yonke. We had some unfinished business in Emporia, Kansas. After over 600 miles and one night in a motel in Emporia we finally conquered the Emporia Odyssey cache. It was the hardest puzzle cache that we have solved to date. I was able to locate 12 caches in Paola, Ottawa, Emporia, Topeka, and Lawrence, Kansas this afternoon while caching with Brian and Carlin.

My First T-Bones Game

Tonight I attended my very first T-Bones Baseball game with a few of the Kansas City Geocachers. We had a ball.

The rest of the pictures we took at the game are available on my Photo Gallery at http://mysteve.com/gallery

Today I found 14 caches around the Kansas City Area. 
 
 
  

More PHP - Trouble Sending Email

I spent the evening learning more about PHP. I had trouble getting my program to send email. Before bedtime I had it working.

PHP - Web Language Of Choice

This evening I started porting one of my simple web pages from ASP written in Perl to PHP. By bedtime I have a couple pages working. I'm really enjoying PHP.

Learning A New Language - PHP

I started reading up on the PHP Web Lanuage this evening. I've been putting off learning this new language for too long. So far I'm enjoying it.

Slow Day - Still Transfering My Email Address

Today was a slow day at work. This evening I'm still finding places that I need to change my email address.

GoDaddy.Com - Changing Email Address

My new hosting company, godaddy.com, is working out pretty good. I spent most of the evening changing my email address from steve@sprintmail.com to steve@mysteve.com.

It rained most of the morning. We sure needed it.

Long Trip Home To Kansas City

It seemed like an awlful long trip home this afternoon. It might be because I kept stopping to get a cache. I grabbed 9 caches on the way home this afternoon. All of them were in Arkansas.

For some reason my gas mileage was not as good this trip.

Honda Fit Gasoline Usage Update:
HondaFitGasUsage.htm

Lawn Mowing Day In Arkansas

Today was John Deere day for me. I spent the first half day mowing the place.

This evening the kids and grandkids came to our house for supper. Mary and Laura fixed a wonderful meal. We really enjoyed ourselves.

New Email Address - steve@mysteve.com

I spent a lot of time today changing my email address to steve@mysteve.com for places that I could remember. I'm sure it will take weeks, maybe months to change my email address. I have been using steve@sprintmail.com for many years. I hate to give it up.

IPowerWeb Did Not work Out For Me

I had to cancel IPowerWeb today. They required port 8087 and I could not access the control panel from work.

This afternoon Glen Fair introduced me to godaddy.com. They offer 100 gigabytes of space for $4.89 per month. Tonight I signed up for webhosting with godaddy.com for 3 years to host mysteve.com. I will also be changing my email address to steve@mysteve.com with this offer.

Signed Up For New Web Hosting

I signed up with IPowerWeb today to host mysteve.com. I plan to turn off my web server at home and use IPowerWeb to host mysteve.com. They offer 10 gigabytes of space for $6.95 per month.

I Turned Off Our Phone Today

Since we never use our home phone in Kansas City, I turned it off today and transferred my concession to our phone in Little Rock. That will allow us to have free phone service in Little Rock and save us about $40 per month.

I also signed up for SBC Yahoo Dial-up service today since I get a concession on it. That will allow us to save another $22 per month on earthlink dial-up.

I also signed up for a new web hosting company. I plan to shut down my Window 2003 server and move mysteve.com to my new account on ipowerweb.com This will allow me to turn off my $43 per month cable modem with Earthlink.

Last month I turned off DirecTV.

I did not realize that we were paying so much for data. Zeroes and One's have been costing us a fortune.