Yeah, that’s right. KC and I were on the road. This weekend; here’s the update:

Friday night I went up to Rookie’s in Davenport to watch Spatterdash perform. What a great show. I really think these guys rock. Also, I enjoyed a number of Newcastle Brown Ales (I think I found a new favorite beer). Lots of good tunes and good brew. Thanks, Rebecca, for the ride up and back; KC didn’t want to stay out that late (I didn’t think 1am was late?!) so she didn’t go.

Saturday morning we left for Des Moines. We met up with ZDog, J, and KC’s mom and watched the end of the Iowa game (we were driving during most of the first half). Then we all went to the Outback for a nice meal. Later, ZDog and J went back to ZDog’s apartment, KC and I took her mom home. From there KC and I proceeded to Adel to attend the induction ceremony where her dad, Paul, was inducted into the Adel-DeSoto-Minburn Athletic Hall of Fame. This was the main reason we made the drive. All of this year’s inductees can be seen here. It is only the second year of this, and the first year’s inductees are here. I knew he was quite a player “back in the day” but I really had no idea; now he is in the same group at Adel as the legendary Nile Kinnick. WOW! Congratulations, Paul.

Sunday we got our extra hour of sleep (did you?) and then went with ZDog and J to their church. Nice service. Then we met KC’s mom at HyVee for brunch. Then we packed it all up and headed back for the homestead. We did stop at WalMart to do some shopping in order to get a number of things that we normally get while grocery shopping on Saturday. Now a lazy evening with football, movies and blogging.

We are having a nice food day in celebration of Halloween today at work. Lots of us brought in some kind of food; I brought in a loaf of Tuscan bread, a small container of almond butter and my “world-famous” egg rolls. There is a boatload of food here today: potato soup, chicken casserole, barbeque pork, egg rolls, macaroni and cheese, cheesey potatoes, hot wings, a variety of chips and dips, different kinds of sausage/cheese/cracker trays, a fruit tray and, of course, a TON of desserts. I think the coolest was one brought in that looks like a kitty litter box, complete with partially melted Tootsie Rolls that look like cat poop. (I really had qualms about eating that!)

Here we are again at the Thursday Threesome!

Onesome: Roll – On a roll lately? What have you been up to where things just keep falling into place (maybe you’re a Red Sox fan)? Yeah, what’s working (even if it’s just the TV)? Well, not so much lately. I am working on a PHP/MySQL calendar and it is kind of falling in to place so far but I’ve got a long way to go with it. Some things are falling in to place, though. Lots of stuff at work is just fitting together nicely.

Twosome: Top – Top of the world? What’s the highest point you’ve ever been? No, the airliner doesn’t count, I’m talking about standing somewhere . Have you made it to the roof? …the Eiffel Tower? Mt. McKinley? How high is high for you? I have been in Rocky Mountain National Park, but I’ve never made it up to the top of a peak. I’ve always been stopped by weather. Kind of strange, isn’t it, that it snows so much in late May? Also, I’ve been to the top of the Empire State Building.

: Desk – Hey, what type of setup do you have for your computer work? Are you working from a laptop while sitting on the couch? …or maybe you have a high tech workstation/hutch combo with mood lighting and soothing music? No? How about the kitchen table? Where do you post and work from? I’ve posted a picture of my home office area before; I have since changed blog software from Movable Type to WordPress and for some reason I don’t have that picture in the archives any more. I’ll post it later, when I get home. Here’s the picture.

Congratulations to the Boston Red Sox, who won the World Series this year in decisive fashion over the Saint Lous Cardinals by sweeping them 4-0. There are some interesting things to note here:

• Tony LaRussa was the manager of the last team to be swept in the World Series, the Oakland A’s in 1989. Hey, he’s a great manager; just a victim of circumstance.
• The 1989 A’s and the 2004 Cardinals boasted the best record in baseball that year.
• Both teams had power hitters who also hit for a good average; McGwire and Canseco for the A’s, Pujols, Roland and Edmonds for the Cardinals.
• Both teams had excellent closers who once were starters; Eckersley for the A’s, Isringhausen for the Cardinals.
• Both teams were known as offensive machines who played good defense, had better pitching and had good clutch players.
• Both were considered nearly unbeatable by their opponent when the World Series began.

Hey, I’m not a fan of either team. I’m just glad the World Series is over. If the season keeps dragging like this one, soon enough a nickname like Mr. October will not be a World Series nickname; it will be a league playoff nickname. And what player wants that?

Back for a second installment on my blog, but it is the eleventh overall appearance of Are you more!

01) Flip/clamshell/opening cell phone or non-opening cell phone? I like the flip phones; I am a big guy and when they open they are larger than the non-opening phones.

02) Eating asian food with chopsticks or eating it with cutlery? I like using chopsticks but am not proficient at using them. Sounds like a diet!

03) Apt to go for a day eating only vegetables or go for a day eating only meat? Definitely going all day eating only meat. What? You mean you CAN go for a day without it? HERESY!

04) Sitting at the blackjack table or playing the slot machines? Neither one tickles my fancy. I just don’t enjoy blackjack or gambling.

05) Build a house facing east to enjoy the sunrise or facing west to enjoy the sunset? East, but to warm it up in the morning. Kind of nice after a cool night.

06) Fresh, uncooked peas or fresh, uncooked carrots? Raw PEAS? Definitely fresh, uncooked carrots. What’s up doc?

07) Likely to want a (hypothetical) partner from another culture to adapt to yours or you’ll adapt to their culture? I think it would (and should) be a melding of the two cultures.

08) Going to spice up the food with curry or spice it up with chili peppers? Chili peppers, but not Red Hot Chili Peppers! Yeah, I like Mexican food and chili peppers are Mexican heat.

09) Preferring of a no-nonsense font (Times Roman or Courier) or a font with more distinctive flair? I personally like the Verdana font. Can’t you tell from the font on this blog?

10) On the NHL lockout issue, siding with the owners or the players? I’d like to say the players, but I think all sports figures get paid way too much. The only way to curb that is to side with the owners, unfortunately.

My apologies to those of you who are regular readers. I’ve been rather preoccupied with writing my calendar. Here’s what I’ve done so far:

Here we go again… TV Tuesday.

Animals have always been a part of the TV market, from commercials, to their own shows, even their own channels, let’s talk animals!!

1. What’s your favorite or least favorite “wildlife” show? Why?
I always enjoyed Wild Kingdom when I was growing up. You know: It’s Marlin Perkins live from the wild! Let’s watch Jim wrestle with the giant killer bear while I pop the top on a cold one! Well it wasn’t exactly like that, now, was it?

2. Who’s your favorite animal TV star?
HMMM. Probably either Lassie or Benji, unless cartoons count (then it’s Daffy Duck!).

3. What animal (pet or wildlife) shows do you watch?
Any more I don’t watch any of them regularly. I pop in on the Animal Planet channel once in a while, but I’m not a regular of any shows featuring animals.

~Bonus~ For pet lovers, if your pets had their own TV show what would it be called? Why?
Daisy’s show would be “The Dog that Licked Everybody”. She likes sitting on the couch next to ANYONE and if she isn’t getting petted by you she wants to lick your hand until you do pet her.

Ok, I overheard one manager talking to another saying “We have 20 gigs of storage and a total of 4 terabytes”. Now that got me thinking (I know I’m warped; my mind just works this way!): we call megabytes “megs” and we call gigabytes “gigs”, so….. do we call terabytes “ters”? Just a question.

One more time, I gotta give it up for Kittens Spam Words. It’s an amazing little plugin for WordPress that takes care of spam in your comments. It moves them to an “Awaiting Moderation” area where they can be deleted without ever making it to your blog. After about 2 weeks of using it, I found that today I had 42 spam comments (all within about 3 minutes of each other) awaiting moderation. I deleted those little suckers and we’re off and bloggin’!

Happy Anniversary, Geoff and Roberta!

I make no bones about how funny I think the BOFH is. I wish I was that powerful, ruthless, cold and inventive when it comes to IT concerns. Here’s an excerpt that made me laugh out loud:

Look, up in the blog! It’s a meme! It’s a poll! No! It’s the Friday Five!

When you were a child…

1. what did you want to be when you grew up and why?
At various times I wanted to be a fireman, an astronaut and a professional baseball player. I guess almost every boy goes through these stages. Fireman because they were local heroes and they wore really cool uniforms. Astronaut because I was 13 when we landed on the moon and every boy and teen wanted to be Neil Armstrong in 1969. Professiona baseball player because it would be really cool to play baseball every day AND get paid for it!

2. who was your favorite person to do things with (excluding your parents)?
Any one of my brothers (I have four younger brothers and no sisters). We grew up in a small town and there simply weren’t many others to do things with.

3. did you love school or did you hate it? Why? Did that change as you got older?
Loved it. I think almost all kids like school until middle school some time. I even liked it then. It never really changed. I enjoyed high school so much I went to college to become a high school teacher!

4. was your family close? What were your favorite family traditions?
Yeah, we were and still are close. My favorite family traditions involved holidays. My grandparents lived a few miles apart and we visited them both on Thanksgiving Day and on Christmas Day; made for a long day, but I got to do it all on those days! Also, growing up we had a Friday night tradition of some kind of soup: chili, vegetable, bean and ham, etc. Mom would have that soup for us because we were all involved in Friday night school activities (basketball, football, band).

5. did you think that being an adult would be cool?
Yes, I did. Little did I know that there would be responsibilities involved in that!