We are having some “minor” flooding issues here in Muscatine. We had our highest flood in recorded history in 1993 and our most damaging flood in history in 1965 – I remember both. This is just a bit of high water in comparison. A friend of mine took some pictures, so I thought I share a few:
  

Dear Abie,

The other day, I set off for work, leaving my husband in the house watching TV. I hadn’t gone more than a kilometer or two when my engine conked out, and the car shuddered to a halt. I walked back home only to find my husband making love to our neighbor. My husband was let go from his job six months ago, and he says he has been feeling increasingly depressed and worthless. I love him very much, but I don’t know if I can trust him anymore. What should I do?

Sincerely,

Frustrated

As the Star Trek computer used to say to Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk, “Working….” (rattles and clicks and such in the background). I’ve been working on a self-imposed project called “My Family Calendar”. If you’ve read my blog for a long time, you know that I’m not happy with Datenator, the calendar program I’m using. While it’s fairly easy to administer, it only supports regular-interval recurring events (won’t do recurring holidays like Memorial Day – the last Monday in May every year) which is a HUGE thing for me. I’d like to set it and forget it. Plus, it doesn’t include a number of other things I’d like to do. I can’t show you my on-line calendar because it’s password protected so only my family members have access.

I’ve looked at a lot of web-based calendars: WebCalendar, myPHPCalendar, phpWebCalendar, Calendarix, and a slew of others. I’ve even thought about importing my Google Calendar. The ones that do what I want also include features I don’t want like group scheduling, multiple individual calendars, to-do lists, tasks, etc. There are also those that are hard to administer and have a busy screen – too much information at once.

So after going through all of these, I’ve decided to write my own. I’m going to borrow heavily from other calendars. No sense in re-inventing the wheel, right? But what I really want to create is an address book with a calendar interface to help me with family birthdays and anniversaries. Basically here’s how I want it to work:

• It will only display a month view for the calendar.
• ONLY birthdays, anniversaries and holidays will be displayed. Because of this, all events are assumed to last all day, so no hour:minute data will be kept.
• It will allow you to click on an event (birthday, anniversary, holiday) and pop up a window with information on that event.
• The popup will contain contact information: mailing address, email, web page.
• The popup will contain a photo of the person(s).
• The popup will contain the date, but not the year.
• The popup can be printed.
• There will be an admin panel with the following functions:
  • Manage (add/modify/delete) events.
  • Set the admin password.
  • A holiday interface with checkboxes so the admin selects what holidays are displayed.
• Login and Logout of the admin panel.

Once I get these items “perfected” I’ll start adding on my wish list:

• Ability to create a PDF of the displayed month’s calendar that any user can print.
• Ability to automatically send a congratulatory email to the person(s) celebrating their birthday/anniversary, provided they have an email address in the system.
• Ability to send an email that will create a post in WordPress.
• Ability to control these items through the admin panel

Happy Birthday, Vickie!

I’m certain everyone has heard Barack Obama’s message of hope and change. Well, here’s something to think about that I got from Ron. It’s supposed to be funny, but to me it’s a bit frightening.

A little over 2 years ago:

• Consumer confidence stood at a 2 1/2 year high
• Regular gasoline sold for $2.19 a gallon
• The unemployment rate was 4.5%

In 2006, we were told a lot of things by the media and by the politicians running for office that may or may not have been true – as it usually goes with the media and especially with politicians running for office! Since voting in a Democratic Congress in 2006, we’ve seen:

• Consumer confidence plummet
• The cost of regular gasoline soar to over $3 a gallon
• Unemployment is up to 5% (a 10% increase)
• American households have seen $2.3 trillion in equity value evaporate (stock and mutual fund losses)
• Americans have seen their home equity drop by $1.2 trillion dollars
• 1% of American homes are in foreclosure

America voted for change in 2006, and we GOT it!
The most significant accomplishment by the Democratic Congress in 2007?

Finally! I’ve been working on this theme for what seems like FOREVER! So I’m unveiling it a bit early. Here it is folks: My Iowa Spring 1 theme! Anyway, I still need to do some tweaking with it; especially where certain plugins fit in with it. I want it to recognize an use certain plugins that pertain to the display and have to write that in to certain files in the PHP programming. But it’s complete enough that I can put it out there and start using it. I hope to have the tweaks done in the next couple of weeks. After that I’ll make it available for download on my site.

Let me know what you think!

Happy Anniversary, Doug and Susan!

Happy Birthday, Susan!

(the above is an actual AP headline)

Linda Burnett, 23, a resident of San Diego, was visiting her in-laws in Los Angeles and, while there, went to a nearby supermarket to pick up some groceries. Several people noticed her sitting in her car with the windows rolled up. Her eyes were closed, and she had both hands behind the back of her head.

One customer who had been at the store for a while became concerned and walked over to the car. He noticed that Linda’s eyes were now open, and she looked very strange. He asked her if she was okay, and Linda replied that she’d been shot in the back of the head, and had been holding her brains in for over an hour.

The man called the paramedics, who broke into the car because the doors were locked and Linda refused to remove her hands from her head.

When they finally got in, they found that Linda had a wad of bread dough on the back of her head. A Pillsbury biscuit canister had exploded from the heat, making a loud noise that sounded like a gunshot, and the wad of dough hit her in the back of her head. When she reached back to find out what it was, she felt the dough and thought it was her brains.

She initially passed out, but quickly recovered and tried to hold her brains in for over an hour until someone noticed and came to her aid.

So I haven’t been feeling on top of the world for a while. In fact, I’ve had a sore throat for about two weeks. Yeah, I did have a cold earlier but it went its merry way last week some time. The sore throat has lingered. Not that it’s all that bad; it’s just that I have to talk for my job. You really can’t provide phone tech support if you can’t talk, now, can you? So I’ve had this sore throat – well a dry, scratchy throat anyway. It really has been all that’s been going on. I’m not really running a fever or feeling bad or anything else.

Well, today I got fed up with that and got in to the clinic. I called about 8:30 and was told they could get me in at 11:30 this morning – what a break! Usually it’s the next day or later in the afternoon. So I get there at 11:30, and honestly the last time I was there was over 8 years ago. I didn’t really know how to get exactly where I needed to go. So I figured it out and showed up at my physician’s office at about 11:25 – not bad, I thought. I had to fill out a couple of forms but I was ready at 11:35 or so…. and was “immediately” accepted by a nurse at 11:50. That’s right – 20 minutes AFTER my appointment. Then, after being weighed and admitted to an examination room, I waited until 12:20 before the doctor came in. 12:20! Then after a quick check of my throat and ears he prescribed amoxycillin. That’s right, an hour later I got out with a 10 day prescription antibiotic! I felt the entire thing was a waste of everyone’s time – mine, the nurse’s, the doctor’s and even the receptionist!

So now I will be taking 3 amoxycillin pills a day for 10 days. All that for an antibiotic!

Happy Birthday, Jaylen!

“Hello! You have reached the automated answering service of your school. In order to assist you in connecting to the right staff member, please listen to all the options before making a selection:

• To lie about why your child is absent – Press 1
• To make excuses for why your child did not do his work – Press 2
• To complain about what we do – Press 3
• To swear at staff members – Press 4
• To ask why you didn’t get information that was already enclosed in your Newsletter and several flyers mailed to you – Press 5
• If you want us to raise your child – Press 6
• If you want to reach out and touch, slap or hit someone – Press 7
• To request another teacher, for the third time this year – Press 8
• To complain about bus transportation – Press 9
• To complain about school lunches – Press 0
• If you realize this is the real world and your child must be accountable and responsible for his/her own behavior, class work, homework and that it’s not the teachers’ fault for your child’s lack of effort: Hang up and have a nice day!
• If you want this in Spanish, you must be in the wrong country.