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:
  

So Breezomatic called KC tonight. From what I gathered, the conversation went something like this:

Breezomatic: “Mom, the absolute WORST thing that could happen did happen!”
KC: “What?” (Fearing it’s a car accident or her apartment was broken into or a broken bone)
Breezomatic: “You won’t believe it!”
KC: “What?!”

I didn’t think it could happen. I’ve never seen it; KC has never seen it. Our parents haven’t ever seen it. Seen what? Well….

KC and I were headed to Des Moines to visit her mom and her dad. We’re buzzing along on I-80 west, I’m driving about 72mph or so and all of a sudden the passenger door window on My Element simply shatters. Well, a better description is exploded. The entire window simply popped and threw glass all over the inside of the Element. As I said before, I’ve NEVER seen it. I’ve seen when a windshield does that when it gets hit with a rock tossed up by a vehicle in front of me. I’ve seen where a rear window had the same thing happen when some idiot kid shot the glass with a pellet gun. But I’ve NEVER seen the side window simply explode.

Luckily I didn’t swerve or anything, but I was kind of shook up. We managed to get to the Brooklyn exit (yes, there IS a Brooklyn, Iowa!!) A lot of the glass nuggets landed on KC; she was pretty shook up as well. At the Brooklyn exit, KC went into the restroom and shook the glass nuggets out of her shirt, I swept up most of the nuggets that were falling out and we regrouped. I bought a plastic poncho and some duck tape and jerry-rigged a temporary cover. We made it the final 70 miles to Des Moines.

There, ZDog and I went to Menard’s and got some more duck tape and some plexi-glass. (Also since he didn’t have one, we got a jigsaw so we could cut the plexi-glass.) Then we went to ZDog’s place and made a better jerry-rigged cover by cutting the plexi-glass to fit over the window and then using duct tape to hold it in place. It’s held since, so we must have done a good-enough job. Tomorrow I’ve got to call the local auto glass shop and get it fixed right.

Here in the midwest, in December we had near record snowfalls. We have had one of the coldest Januarys on record, even coming close to the average of the late ’70s. Now in February, we’ve had so many days of cold that it’s just getting monotonous. And I overheard someone at work say “The reason we’re having all of the cold weather is because of global warming.” And people say that the Bush Administration is fear-mongering; I think the goofs, like Al Gore, behind this global warming scam are the true fear-mongers.

KC and I left Saturday morning for Des Moines. The goal was to paint her mom’s condo getting it ready to sell. Wow. Two coats on the living room, dining room, and hallway; oh, yeah - two coats on the kitchen as well AFTER we removed two layers of wallpaper. UGH! It was a whirlwind of activity. We had ZDog and Eric (KC’s brother) removing wallpaper, Brenda (Eric’s wife) painting trim and I was painting ceiling. KC was painting walls until ZDog left, then she was helping Eric with the steamer to remove wallpaper. And after all that.. it looks GREAT!

This morning KC and I put on a light second coat and then went to lunch with ZDog and J and Helen (KC’s mom) and Eric. KC and I then took Helen home and began the trek home. I say trek because there was snow coming down the entire way home. And it was a wet, sticky snow. It packed on the road and caused problems for many. We didn’t have any problems other than the amount of time it took to get home. We were planning on going to a friend’s house to watch the Super Bowl, but we didn’t get home until about half time. That’s right…. we left Des Moines at 1:22 and pulled in to our home shortly after 6:30. Of course the 1:40 where we basically sat in one place on I-80 while the emergency vehicles tended to a 5 car wreck didn’t help. We stopped counting after we saw 15 cars in the ditch. In face, one car (a nice looking Subaru) skidded out of control ahead of us a few hundred yards and spun around, skipped the median, slid across the westbound lane and came to a stop on the north ditch of the westbound lane. That made ME slow down!! The good news is that we got home safely. The bad news is we didn’t go to a Super Bowl party. It just wasn’t going to work out. But anyway…

Where did the rest of the week go? It’s Friday already! No, I didn’t get my movie quotes up this week (not that there was a lot of response to them anyway) but I will get back on track and get them out next week.

Tomorrow is Punxsutawney Phil’s big day. Shadow? No? Only Phil will be able to let us know what the weather is going to be like the next six weeks!!

Saw this one on Hot Air, and I have to say that I agree with the guy. Plus, he’s entertaining in his delivery.

And then there’s DAMN cold! The image at the left is off the Weather widget on my blog just a few minutes ago.

So it’s -9° out with very little wind. A buddy of mine said it was -15° this morning at 6am. Yikes! That’s cold. Last year, we had about two days all winter that were below zero and then it was just barely. This has been going on for a week. (It HAS to be global warming that’s making our temperatures so low, right? Wait a minute - warming means temperatures would be HIGHER!?!)

So Mother Nature says, “Happy Thursday!”.

Yes, it has been a while. I’ve been working on my plugins. I started going down one path that I thought made sense. It seemed quite logical to me. However, PHP coders better than me (which really isn’t saying much in their favor) have created a the WordPress Plugin Framework. So after several days of working out an uninstallation process on my own and beginning the coding for this new process, I find a better solution for plugin creation in general. Perhaps it will all be changed in future versions of WordPress… like maybe including an “Uninstall” button on the plugins page where “Activate/Deactivate” and “Edit” buttons already exist - this would take a core edit. But until then, this framework looks to be the best avenue to pursue. Now if we can encourage the other 3,492 plugins authors to use this….

That’s right. While I really like the Office Use Only theme, it’s too cold here. I changed to the Iowa Winter 2 theme because right now it looks a lot like the picture on the header. I won’t have to dream of a white Christmas; it’s a reality. We are supposed to get some snow flurries today that will add a dusting to the several inches we got Saturday.

On another subject, we (KC and I) are hosting my family’s Christmas celebration this year. I have three other brothers in the area and we all rotate the celebration; this year we get Christmas. ZDog and J will be here some time this evening and Breezomatic will be here tomorrow. It ought to be a great time. We may have a full house - 19 if everyone shows up. Plus my brother from Colorado and his family will be calling. I’m really looking forward to the entire day, and I don’t care if I get a present or not. The BEST present is to be among family!

So I’ve spent this week in LA; more precisely South Gate. I have attended an RCI (it’s a Kaizen thing) to improve processes. The process my group focused on was final stages of packaging a file cabinet. Yeah, it sounds pretty boring. It really isn’t. It’s all about efficiency and having the people who work there work smarter so they can meet the expected work load with the least amount of wasted motion and time. While the process my group worked on seems pretty minor, the expectation is to have a file packaged and sent to the warehouse in 30.9 seconds. That’s pretty fast moving for the people packing the cabinets, so studies need to be done to help them get things done quicker and with less wasted movement.

Also, at night, I’ve been going out. There are actually four of us from the IT department who are here. We’ve gone to Rock Bottom in Long Beach and The Yard House in Pasadena. Tonight we will go to another IT department person’s house - he lives in East LA (no Cheech Marin jokes, please!) and services our companies here. I never did get a reply from Ken, so I guess I won’t see him on this trip.

Anyway… tomorrow is our presentation and later in the afternoon is our flight home. Here’s hoping that we have smooth and on-time flights tomorrow. I should be touching down in Moline at 11:30pm - of course, that would only be 9:30pm here and I’ve quickly adjusted to the Pacific Time Zone! It will be good to get home, even if it is 60 degrees warmer here!

I’ve been working on a different theme. I want something that’s really different from a lot of the others I’ve done. I think I have a great concept, I just am having a difficult time moving it from my concept to reality. Ahhh. I’ll figure it out, but it will take some time.

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Now playing: Kid Rock - So Hott
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