Written 2/08/2007 12:57 PM

So is it just me, or does everyone feel like a molested criminal when going through airport "security" I find the whole experience to be dreadful. Take of your shoes, your coat, take your laptop out of it's bag (I thought they had x-ray machines), oh you have a CPAP I don't know what that is, it might be some sort of device, so...how about you stop and wait for me to swab this so that we can tell it's not a bomb.

Anyways...

On our websites at work the amount of unwelcome advertising form submissions has increased. In looking for a pattern, I found one, and now have setup a test filter on one of the forms and have it setup so that all the flagged items will come to me and all the unflagged ones will procede as normal. Hopefully it'll have no false positives and few of any false negatives. So I'll get to see how that works out when I get back to work.

Right now I'm sitting in the Des Moines airport waiting the magical two hours to find out if the plane will be on time. Orbitz did call my cell phone and said that it was currently on time a bit ago, but things change.

Yesterday I had an Acura TL for most of the day, because my car was in for it's 30k mile service. It cost a pretty penny, but they did change the oil filter, oil, roatate and balence and align the tires, fuel system checkup, radiator flush and fill, transmission fluid change, new wipers. Driving the TL was pretty nice though and I kind of want one. But we're in that kind of strange maybe transition period where I'm not sure if I want a car that sitll runs on gasoline only. Who knows what a few years down the line will bring. It had XM in the car too, which is quite a diffrent experience, thought in places I could hear the kinda compressed audio crappyness, but that was generally only on the voice stations. Leather, 4 doors, lots of get up and go, it certainly would be a good road trip car (KC, Omaha, Minneapolis, etc). By a matter of a strange coicidense my boss was also getting his Audi serviced, so I was able to give him a ride into the office and back to get his car (he spent the day downtown). I offered to trade them straight up at the dealership. My RSX-S for the TL...it was a no go...oh well. That said, I really do love their service. They never lack in the communication, which you don't get from a lot of places and they do good work. Customer service goes a long way, in my mind.

An email came out yesterday and this IBM Thinkpad T40 is on the Asset End of Lease list...I'm pretty pumped. that means a new laptop for me (probably gonna have to push back to get more ram in the computer, why do people think 256MB of ram is enough?). On the other hand, our computer that we're using for webtrends is also on the list, which sucks, cause we got a big honking hard drive in there and more ram, and I kind of wonder what they were thinking when they gave it to us in the first place?

Gracie (the cat) has been acting up or out lately so Shannon took her in today to get checked out. They did x-rays and drew blood for some blood work. So we'll see what turns out there. We also made some changes to our home enviroment (around areas that she uses) so we tried to change those back to the way it was before. This may mean that I will need to rebuild our network and put the printers and NAS in another area, rather then in the laundry room (where thy just moved too. Hopefully changing back will cause her issues to go back...and if not...well, we'll cross that bridge if we have to.

I've finally been given some sort of deadline for the main project of the year, which is good, cause I work better knowing there's an end...or at least an expected end. Even if it runs over, then you know that you are over and you need to start working faster.

Yesterday I got to have lunch with Nathan, because he came into town to work on a product installed at Mediacom. I thought it was kind of interesting, cosidering my recent beef with them. I think it went fine for him, cause he sounded like he was on the way home when he called me back. We went down to south Union, which is a fantastic place for lunch (they're only open for lunch). We each had a spicy potato soup with our sandwhiches which were really good. Nathan was actually a little surprised at how spicy it is. I told him the place was owned by the same guy that owns Centro, which is probably in the top 5 or 10 best resturants in town. A group sat down next to us that turned out to be from Paragon...one of them actually gave me thier card. I did mention that a friend of mine did work on contract with them, and she asked me if I was interested in contract work...and I shrugged. I'm really not, I guess. Usually when I get home I'm tired enough that I'd rather do stuff around tIhe house or cook, then technical stuff. Though, I suppose, I'll have to change that and get up off my ass and start learnin me some PHP.

I'm gonna be using the next couple of weeks here to catch up on my magazines...since I'm several months behind on a bunch of them. So I didn't bring a book with me, but about 4 back issues of Cook's Illustrated. I'll get quite a bit read because the battery in here kind of sucks so I'll not be able to do much on here, before it'll make me shut down...unless I can find an outlet, which I doubt.

Oh...does anyone else find it a bit odd that they have a Gate C4 in the Airport...that's what I'm flying out of and I just find it funny...though I suppose it'd be even wieder if they had Get C1-6 without a C4.

I'm gonna miss Jen's baby shower this weekend. Shannon's going and we did get the baby some nice things. I hope it's fun. I'll probably be somewhere between Utah an here when It's going on...or maybe still in Utah...

Now since this probably won't get read by my sister, since it'll be posted right after her wedding. I gotta say that some poor thought process went into the planning as to how to send out invitations. There were NO RSVP cards (for the Family Lunch or the reception). The family lunch was the only one that asked for it, but there was NO way to RSVP. No phone number, no email address, no address to mail to nothing. No clue as to where to send presents. The only contact information was my parents address in Cedar Rapids, where neither of them live. And it's really unfair to expect my parents to pass on any gifts and what not that may get sent to their house. Tonight there's a family dinner hosted by her soon to be husband's parents. But here's the issue...nobody told anyone about it, so I just scheduled myself to arrive sometime during the day or night the day before her wedding, expecting that would be the only day I was expected. No...my flight comes in a bit after 6 the event oritinally started at 6...they pushed it back to 7...so now I'll just be late (and Brent too since it sounds like he'll be my ride). Just not well thought out. We had tons of way to contact us and an extra place to get even more information about our wedding, maps and what not. Oh well...What can you do?

We got them a poultry roasting pan...which was on our wedding registry...actually a lot of things on our wedding registry were on theirs...I found it kind of funny. Same with Dan and Marrisa (wedding next week)...quite a few things on there we actually wanted (what we got them was on our registry too).

written at 11:22 PM

So I'm here in Utah, safe and sound. My oldest sister's house is huge...probably one of the bigger houses that I've been it. And it is very nice. There are a few oddities here and there, but I haven't seen the whole thing yet. I guess maybe I don't get the leopard print...but then again, I'm not a young lad either.

So they had this sort of make your own sandwich thing in the hotel where I think someone is staying...but I'm not sure who...but between us and uh...what's his name's family the room was pretty big and loud. Spencer and Dallin were in full effect along with the Johnson's (older sister's kids) and between the two sets of them I got a little out of sorts. So...they played a little game and they took one of the couple out of the room and asked the other person about the one out of the room. So it was intersting to see what they got right when the person came back. Shortly after that we came here.

Apprently, according to Joseph, there were a few short cuts taken in the building of the house and the one I noticed right of the bat was the water...it's loud...very loud...when I filled up a glass of water downstairs out of their fridge, I had thought I had broken something...but nobody else perked up (my sister was right there) so I sat down and drank some water....any ways...interesting to say the least....I'm wearing my Guiness pajama pants, and I feel a bit wierd about it, but in all seriousness they are my only pajamas....so it's either these or boxers...I think they'll prefer the pajama pants...