Paged Out At 5:45 A.M. This Morning

I started the day with a very stressful page at 5:45 a.m. Our PAT application was dead. That means non of our users in the service centers on the east coast could do their work. After getting many people on a conference bridge we found the answer all was well by about 8:00 a.m. The bosses are not happy.

I am getting ready to head to Little Rock for the weekend.

Reserved A Penske Truck

I am beginning to really feel sad about leaving Kansas City for good. I have loved living in Kansas City. I have had some great experiences and met some wonderful people. I really hate leaving but in spite of all that the time has come. Today I reserved a Penske Truck for December 12th for my final trip to Little Rock.

Packing Up

Every evening I try to pack some stuff in two Wal-Mart bags to take home from work. I am hoping that I might get it all carried home in the next two weeks before I leave Embarq permanently on December 12th. I have so much junk I have collected through the years that I'm not sure I'll get it all toted home by then.

I Know You Are suppose To Just Trust Him, BUT

Somehow the reality of retirement hit me tonight. I could not get anything done for worrying about the future. I wish I knew how Mary and I are going to make it but the reality of the matter is, I don't know how we are going to make it.

We have prayed about this for some time and we are just going to take a giant leap of faith and start doing everything we believe the Lord wants us to do and see where He will lead us. In other words we are just going to trust God for our provision. We do not know what He wants us to do. We just believe He will lead us along.
We are currently praying about starting a little videography business.

I Sent In My Retirement Application Today

I finally had to do it. They have been trying for weeks to work things out so I could work from home in Little Rock. The word came down the pipe today that the Vice President will not approve it. After talking to Andy and my boss I faxed in my Retirement Application. I guess in a couple weeks I'll be unemployed. I am scared to death but I am trusting the Lord to take care of Mary and I. We will start and see where the Lord leads us. Very scary for a guy that has been employed all my life.

A Very Nice Day To Attend Virtual Church

I know the Bible does not say anything about Virtual Church but I could not go home to Little Rock this weekend because of the SODS cutover. It was very nice to watch the live services on my TV and listen on my big stereo speakers. I have a S-Video jack on my laptop patched to the TV and the speaker jack patched to my stereo. Looks good and sounds great.

A Long Day In My Hole-In-The-Ground

I could not sleep this morning so I was up early. I spent the day working on our church radio station. I am trying to improve the quality of the songs and I am trying to improve the program that plays the rotation of songs.

I have also spent a lot of time thinking about starting a videography business so Mary and I can have a little income when I retire.

A Nice Work From Home Day

It was nice that the boss let us work from home today. We moved all of the SODS processing off the Dallas SODS server tonight to our Kansas SODS server. Normally the load is split between the two servers. We are going to try to make it for two weeks with all processing done on the Kansas server. Things went very smooth.

Thanksgiving With Robby and Rachel

Robby and Rachel did an outstanding job today preparing a Thanksgiving Feast for the three of us. I really enjoyed my time with them. Great Food!

Scott is home from the hospital. He has been in great pain and taking strong pain pills. My heart is really hurting for him and Lacey.

Scott's Finger Makes For A Very Hard Day

It is very difficult to get anything done today. They removed Scott's forth finger this morning and part of his hand in order to smooth things up so it will heal smoother. A very sad situation indeed.

Hooray! I Get To Work From Home Tomorrow

For some reason or other the boss said we could work all from home tomorrow. The problem is I have to be here for a big cut-over Friday night so I have to stay in Kansas City. I guess that is alright because Mary, Scott and Lacey plan to come up here to Kansas City on Friday. I guess depends on how Scott does with his finger situation.

Scott is doing very well considering what he has been through. They plan to take off his forth finger tomorrow. They say it is just a skeleton of a finger. I have cried a lot tonight worrying about him and Lacey and his future. I know that God is in control of things. I must trust Him.

A Very Sad Day - Scott Cut Off Two Fingers

Mary called me about 4:40 p.m. this evening crying. She said Scott had cut off two fingers and was on the way to the emergency room. I spent a big part of my evening crying and praying for him and his family. He lost his little finger on his left hand and the forth finger is so bad they think it will have to come off in the next day or two. I am really hurting for him.

I tried to get my mind off Scott by working on an audio project for my brother David and the BEAMS Ministry. After much work I put about 12 messages on my Windows Media Streaming server for him. I made a small webpage so I could test them and access them from my PocketPC at http://slb.no-ip.com:81/BEAMS2007.htm.

Early Thanksgiving

Since I had to go back to Kansas City this afternoon Mary fixed a fantastic Thanksgiving Dinner. The kids and grandkids were all there and we had a great time. The food was just out of this world. Thank you honey. It was great!

We all discussed starting an Event Videography business so I could retire. They have got me excited thinking about that. Maybe we better start praying about that. I shall do that.

The Wedding Went Fine

Lee did a fantastic job playing all the music for the wedding this afternoon. As far as I know he did not mess up one time. It was a beautiful wedding. We gave the family 10 DVD's of the ceremony.

Wedding Rehersal

Since Lee and I are doing the audio and video for a wedding tomorrow we attended the wedding rehersal tonight to make sure we had all our duck in a row and ready for tomorrow. I think Lee has the hardest job. He has to coordinate many different songs from CD's and be sure he plays them at the right time. I think he will do fine.

I Gotta Go To Little Rock

 

 

 

I decided to make the long trip home this evening. I am suppose to video a wedding on Saturday at church and the wedding practice is tomorrow night. I decided that I must work at home tomorrow in order to be at the practice session tomorrow night.

Beautiful Fall Walk Around the Sprint Campus

 

WOW! What a beautiful day to go for a walk. Chris and I walked the first mile and a half without my camera. It was so beautiful that I went by my office and grabbed my camera for the second trip around the campus.

Feeling Blue Today

I would guess that I am feeling blue today. I feel like I ought to be home in Little Rock but I am stuck in corporate prison. I have been trapped in cube land for 25 to 30 years. I would like to escape. "Oh God! Please help me to have the faith to walk away and trust you for our provision."

The Embarq Van

 

Robby and I went to lunch today at Korma Sutra. We really enjoyed the sensuous cuisine of India. Great service! Great food!

I grabbed this picture of the Embarq Van as I was leaving work in the parking garage.

Great Day! Great Preaching! Beautiful Music!

I attended virtual church in Little Rock from my studio apartment in Kansas City. I have watched and listened to all services from Crystal Hill Baptist Church and Heritage Baptist Temple today.

After church I worked on the "Request A Song" link on our CHBC Gospel Radio Station. I am very pleased that it is working. I think this is a very nice feature of our station. Now I just need a lot more content for the station.

My Workstation At Home In Kansas City

 

I spent a very hard day here at my workstation in my studio apartment in Kansas City. I wanted the currently playing songs to appear in Windows Media Player while they are playing on our CHBC Gospel Radio Station. This turned out to be a huge challenge for me. I had the songs appearing before I went to bed tonight. I still need to work on the "Request A Song" link. Not sure how to make that work.

Three Mile Walk With Chris

 

We're Having Twin Girls

I just got word that Robby and Rachel are having twin girls. WOW! We went from no girls to four girls. Now our grandkids will be evenly matched. Four boys and four girls.

PAL (Playlist Automation Language)

I invested my evening learning more about MySQL and PAL. I am using PAL to Queue up the songs on our CHBC Gospel Radio station on the Internet. This new language is kind of awkward for me. You can not let X = Y, you have to use X := Y. None of the languages I use at work do it like this. I just wish I could use Perl. Anyhow I am kind of getting use to using PAL to accomplish what I need.

MySQL GUI Tools

Tonight after church (virtual church at Crystal Hill and Heritage Baptist) I discovered MySQL GUI Tools. WOW! They are nice. A week or so ago I converted my Sam Broadcaster to use MySQL Database and I have been using command line SQL to do things with the database. I am very glad to know how to do command line stuff but these GUI tools are so nice I will no doubt being using them in the future.

Proverbs Recording Session

I spent a big part of my evening recording many new Proverbs for our CHBC Radio Station. I did not get anywhere near all of them on the air because there is so much work to get the database populated with the new information about each file. I guess that will be for another time. At least I have them recorded and ready to go on the air.

Working With Saturdays Pictures

I walked the three miles around the Sprint Campus today for the first time in over a month. I think I did pretty good to keep up with these young guys(Andy & Chris) I walk with.

I spent a big part of the evening trying to decide which pictures from last Saturday to delete. I started with about 246 and ended with about 143. That's a lot of work. Then I made a short slide show with some of the pictures for last Saturday's blog. I put all the new pictures in my Subversion Repository.

I listened to last Sunday morning's message again. I am still in turmoil over that message.

Lonesome Trip To Kansas City

After church I took off to Kansas City all alone. The more I pondered the morning message the more depressed I became. I know that is a bad thing but that's what happened. I want what the preacher preached about so badly but it seems that I just can not get there from where I am in my christian walk. I have been trying for a long, long time and it is really wearing on me.

Petit Jean Mountain - First Cache In 14 Months

Today eleven of us took off for Petit Jean Mountain armed with 476 caches loaded in the GPS's and the laptop. We spent the day climbing around all over the mountain and found 8 geocaches. The picnic lunch was fantastic and was topped off with lots of Smores. We found our last geocache in the dark at Lake Maumelle on the way home. Caching today brought back many fond memories of caching with our good friends Brian and Carlin Yonke in Missouri.

The Catfish Hole

Tonight we went with Scott, Lacy, all their kids, Everette and Grace to The Catfish Hole in North Little Rock. Mary and I had not been there in many years. The fish was excellent and we had a great time together.

Heritage Baptist Temple Video Streaming

Mary and I went to a revival meeting at Heritage Baptist Temple tonight to help my brother David get live video streaming working. We worked right up to starting time at 7:00 p.m. getting everything working. Their sound card was way more than I expected. Very nice, but very complicated. We got the sound working just as they started. Everything went fine from there and they let me run the camera. I think they know how to do it in the future.