Drawn and quartered???

There are times when life feels like it is a bit much.. ususally for me it seems it's not something I want ie finances, something breaking. Then there are the times when life is just busy and seems to be overwhelming.

I am at one of those overwhelming times..
Side job:
Currently I am trying to finish a todo list for my side job and getting frustrated because everytime I think about working on one or two of the big items there are a couple of small ones that pop up and eat up my time. I have make a couple of break throughs which help long term but I still want to get the stuff off my todo list and move on. On the other hand I just talked with Sonor Quest labs and got the process started to add another item to my todo list. This will both be helpful but will cause me to implement other changes that we had planned on earlier.

Regular job:
I am basicly a backup programmer for a project that doesn't require a full time programmer but when something needs to be fixed and they need it quickly and the main person is not here then it falls on me. Now the program was redone this last year and is now in C#. I can muddle my way though C but I haven't had any formal experience with it. So right now I am currently working my way though a book on programming C# in order to get a better idea on how to read the code and write it. Current deadline for the people useing the program mid September. Also I have undertaken a big project and converting it to .net as well before January.

Home:
Shhhh Girlfriend.. yes it's true. She is a nurse, 32 and has a 2 year old daughter. Because she works every other weekend I am watching her daughter for her. Kids are back in school. I didn't hear from a Montessori school I was expecting to put Timothy in and so he and Samantha are at the same school. Timothy is not doing the same behaviors as he was last year when we tried this but he is also use to being at a Montessori school vs a traditional one. So we have a issue of schoolwork not getting done. Being up out of his seat, ect. So I have to spend about a hour to a hour and half at night working with him on getting his homework and schoolwork done. I also signed up both kids for soccer starting next week. This means that 4 days a week one or the other will be there til 5:30pm. Not a huge thing but it's a half hour out of getting home, dinner and homework. Also their game are on Sat Mornings from 8am to 11am. I was leary about putting Tim in this since I am trying to get hom back into a Montessori school but hoping it all works out.

Girlfriend:
Trying to find time to spend with her. We have been trying to a lunch a week and then doing something on Friday or on the weekend she has off.

I am having a hard time shaking the feeling of being pulled in all directions and wanting a longer day.

Powering up again..wow

Ok, please note that in the previous post we had our last dove leave us with her kids. Update....we now have a new dove up there. I am going to assume that it is not the same one, I personally think it is way to soon especially with the young ones. But never the less she has been giving us hard looks. I was still amazed that after today she is still up there. So we will see how it goes..The Jenkins Power Company is now powering a fan again on the back porch via dove.

Now for today. It is, ok looks at the time, was Sam's B-Day party/sleepover. I had orginally though that there might be 7-8 people for the party, with it least 6 for the sleepover. Turns out that there were 5 for the party and 3 for the sleep over. The party portion went well. It got off to a late start because we were expecting 3 more, Sam kept saying, 'yes they are coming'. But it went well. I found that for waterballoons having the kids help fill them and the adults tying them off was very fun. The kids had fun and the adults got squirted. We had fun later while playing Uno Attack.. I actually think that it is more fun than regular uno. The girls stayed up very late watching a movie and then doing nails ect. Sam went to bed at 1am. The rest I finally said "Lights out, if you stay up and talk fine, but lights out and doors closed." Needless to say they crashed. Bad for me since I stayed up and talked til 4am and then woke up at 7am. Sam was up shortly there after. Don't you love us morning people.

Leave it to the Birds

Well we had a dove take up the nest that is out on the back porch. I didn't think to much off it. She just looked at us as we went in and out. About a week ago I finally confirmed that the did lay some eggs and that they did hatch. The young ones were so quiet that we didn't hear them. They were already big enough that this week the mother left the nest a couple of time. The next thing we knew the nest was empty.

I also have a bell shaped thing of bird seed that we have hung out there as well, along with a humming bird feeder. Well the bell is mostly gone and I though I would replace it with a regular bird feeder, especially one that more than one bird could be on... ya know pecking order(grins). So Grandma Bess had purchased on and given it to us. I put it out yesterday. At one point when I looked there were about 12 birds feeding on or around it, mostly sparrows. I also saw a couple of doves again on the ground. So looks like for now were are a popular place with the birds.

HTML Coding

Ok I have been working on the website for the place that I work on and off for about a week now. Working on a page that hopefully can go out shortly public and then having someone help us with a new menu. So I redid a webpage so that it used the same code for the rest of the site on the menu system and that it was able to swap out the picture on the top as well. We had one of our web consultants help us with a new menu. So I had to pull the old code and redo it on 3 web sites. So needless to say I am tired of doing web coding for the week and I hope not to get back to doing more for it least a couple of days.

When the switch goes

So I go by my side job this morning to drop off a scanner that I had for the weekend for testing. As I am walking in the manager says, "I can't get to the database or the internet." I asked if it was just one computer or all of them. We walk in the computer room and I see one switch for the network up and running. I look up for the other one by the patch panel and there are no lights on. I go oh no not the main switch! Try two power cables and a couple of different outlets and nothing. So talking to the network consultant and he says it's dead and to get a new one. So I run down to the store that I know has a 24 port switch and get a new one. I get back and the old one is on but they can't get anywhere. So I take down the old one and install the new one. It's fun swapping all 24 patch cables from the old to the new. I also had to re arrange a couple of things so that the new switch would plug into one of the upses that there, I think this may have possibly been the issue as they have enough power outages ect. due to the area. Needless to say I got to work late and it was a fun morning.

Spring around Arizona

Well we had a great weekend and I was reminded that Arizona does have a spring. The flowers that Grandma got us and we planted around one of the palo verde in the back are slowly coming up, 6 so far. I have some flowers that are coming up for humming birds/butterflies. And I stepped outside and look at one of the palo verde out front and it was in bloom. It looked so great I had to take a picture of it.

Included are some pics of the Phoenix Rock Art Center where we went Saturday as well.

My geek is showing

Ok so I got the tax return and I offered the kids two choices Big Screen TV or computer.... Personally I wanted the TV because I am getting tired of looking at stuff on the 20" tv that we have now. So they went with the computer. Process for the computer.. Order said computer. (duo core 2.6g, 320gb hd, 4gb ram, creative sound card, 20" ws monitor, ati 256mb video card) Get said computer. Laugh evilly while unpacking and setting up the computer. Immediatly do updates ect while kids say can I use it yet. Which I of course promptly ignore and growl... not really. I had ordered 3 usb flash drives(Scandisk Cruzer) when I ordered the computer 2 4gb and 1 8gb. 2 went on the computer, 1 for windows readyboost(4gb), and 1 for Lord of the Rings Online(LOTRO) (8gb) for speeding up the loading of the textures, ect in the game. The last one was for me and the side job as I got tired of waiting for my current usb flash drive to quit taking 17 minutes to copy the current version of the code I was working on over so I could upload it to the development computer on the job site. The new one only takes about 3-5 minutes. Needless to say that after setting it all up and then putting the kids to bed later.. I of course had to crack the case open. Yea I know I couldn't resist...well acutally it was because the front jacks for the headphones didn't work and I wanted to know why. So I poped the case open and then discoved that the connectors had been plugged into the motherboard vs the sound card! Problem solved.. tested, tweaked, played with and finally went to bed. Oh ya the upgrade thinking lasted less than a week. On list new power supply and upgraded video card.

Jenkins Power Company is Downsizing

Ok so I have had my Uncle here for two weeks now. He came out and found a job and is done with training today and will be officially moving into his apt close to his work tonight. Well mostly. So this mean that instead of having another adult and dishwasher around the house it will just be down to me and the kids again. One of the weird things is that for the most part he had the same sleeping schedule as me because he had to be to work at 6am. Since I have been getting up at 4-5am to work on the side job this means that we were both going to bed about the same time and getting up at the same time. It has been nice to have him as I could make some more foods that I like to eat and I know the kids don't. This has the upside in the fact that there are also less leftovers of the foods I like to eat and make. WOOT. We will miss him being around so much and enjoying his company.

Another busy day...

So I started the day thinking ok good day to do laundry(giggles), clean up the kitchen, get a mop bucket and clean house. Well it started that way until I got a call from Bess. Apparently my neice is in town from Germany and they are going to the Wildlife World Zoo today and wanted to know if I could come. I said sure when are they going to be there. Basiclly I finally got the call from her at noon saying that her son, Randy, was on the way to get her. So finished our quick lunch and left. We got to meet Chelsie,who is Randy's daughter in law, and her daughter, my neice, Miranda. She is so cute. We had fun at the zoo and came home after almost 4 hours and had a nice dinner. Posted this and calling it a night.

David(Donna R's boyfriend), Miranda and Donna R looking at penguins.

Here are some upsidedown jellyfish... they don't float they attach themselves to the floor bottom to feed

B-Days

Call me strange but this is mainly just me. It has kind of come to the point that for me it least birthdays are just another day. I have usually had to work or this or that. So for me I actually had a nice birthday this year. I took the kids to the zoo and had a nice quiet enjoyable day. Sam commented later that afternoon. Happy B-day Dad. I forgot it was yours today. I know my kids like going to other kids b-day parties and they like theirs. I am all for that but I guess for me now a days..and no it is not a age thing..ie oh you are that old.. it is more I would just like a nice quiet day of relaxing.

New Year recap from the last couple of months

Ok it's been a while. Some pics of what we have been doing lately.
Sam's 1st grade teacher's daughter's birthday party happed on 11/22 at Castle's and Coasters. I really didn't get any pics of Sam on the rides as she was with someone else. She did go on almost every ride but the one that drops you from about 80 feet up including the big adult rollercoaster there. I was amazed. Here is a pic of Tim on the go cart course with the son of the lady of the group I was with. They were in first execpt for the last lap.

Well as you know we don't have snow here so we had to have it imported. Here are the kids in the snow at the Goodyear Jolly Holly city festival with 40 tons of snow. Tim lost his gloves and his hands got quite cold while they were in there but they had fun.

We went to a boat parade at the begining of December out at where Grandma Bess Jonason lives. Her neighbor is right on the lake had had a big party that we briefly took the kids to. They only stayed long enough to see the boat parade but they had fun. The second shot is one of the better ones that I got where the people took the frame work for a hot air balloon burner and mounted it on the front of the boat and would ignite it. It was amazing to see.



Here is a shot on the day after Christmas where I setup Tim's Hot Wheels stunt sets. Each one basicly kicks off the other one. It pretty much took up the entire space between the kitchen table and the piano in the dining room area.

Of course Dad has been giggling gleefully since he got these installed and his coworkers are grateful he kept bugging them. Christmas present to myself finally. I love them. Not the best shot. The stand are also drawers to hold stuff as well as cabinates above. Way to much storage in certain parts of this house.


Ok let me explain this one. I took the kids out to one of the local parks and Sam was sliding down. For some reason this slide would build up a lot of static electricity. You can see her as she was sliding down. Then after she got up. Her hair would literally stand on end. I was laughing pretty hard and she thought it was great as well. click on the pic for a larger shot.