So it goes...

It was a fairly average weekend. At the same time, I'm learning to appreciate average in ways I've never known before. Friday night I had the house to myself for about 3 hours. Ben had a sleepover and Donna and Sarah had to work. It was a chance for me to write a bit, surf the web, listen to the stereo at my own level and just be alone. I'm one of those people who's very comfortable being alone and tends to want to do too much when it happens. This time I allowed myself to do just enough. It was great. While the alone time was good, it was nice to greet the girls when they got home too. We just had pizza and hung out. I learned there's peace in being alone, and peace in being together with family. Saturday morning was filled with the usual busyness. Cutting the grass, cleaning the house, walking the dog. In the afternoon we  all went down to the east side of Milwaukee for Ian' Pizza  for a kind of belated birthday lunch for Sarah. I had a slice of Mac n C...

Tonight was the closing celebration for Mosaic Middle School ministry . We closed it out with outdoor dodge ball and the Talent Show. I've never played dodge ball outside, but it was actually kind of fun. Nice to be outdoors and there's something to be said for a wind advantage when you've got a 12 MPH wind at your back when you're chucking with all your might. The talent show was a lot of fun. I have nothing but complete respect for every contestant in the show. I could never have the nerve to get up there in front of everyone and sing a song or dance. Maybe in a group of peers, perhaps, but never A Capella. Most were VERY good, and a couple were, well, not. Even the bad ones got good supportive applause. That's the beauty of Mosaic. It's all about building each other up, not tearing down. It has been an interesting journey, this year as a leader in Middle School. I originally looked upon it with great trepidation, not knowing what to expect. I always thoug...

Just returned from another successful EWUG conference in Middleton, WI ( www.ewug.org ). This conference is for techy , geeky, GIS types who get excited about new geoprocessing tools and functions, server apps, and software upgrades. Typically we talk shop until the wee hours because we forget that we have families and the like. It's really sad actually. In all truthfulness, it's not as bad as that. We try to abide by the rule that there is to be no GIS talk after 9:00 PM, which is probably a good thing anyway. If there is to be GIS talk, it has to be kept light, like software slamming or sharing the dirt on someone who was fired, etc. No talking about how to properly set up a spatial index on multiple attribute columns in a SQL Server 2008 Release 2 database. Ooops , there I go again. I'm sorry. The keynote speaker for the conference was Clint Brown from ESRI . He was mildly engaging, but what caught my attention was how he kept referring to applications that allowed...

Tried again last night to get the whole XBox Live thing worked out. Spent an hour and a half with an American gentleman (thank goodness) and still did not resolve the issue. I swear, I was five minutes from breaking into tears. I had to hang up, or I would have gone off on the guy. He was in the process of "escalating" me again to someone who had access to more tools than he did. Can you believe that? It took him an hour and a half to realize he didn't have the right tools? I'm glad he wasn't fixing my dryer. Anyhow, my cell battery was about dead, I was toast myself, and at that point I'd forgotten why I called in the first place. I suspect I'll try again someday when I'm feeling lucky. I DID manage to fix my own dryer this week, however. A friend had mentioned at Ben's football game last week that fixing a dryer is easier than you would think. So, on Monday, I busted it open and took a look. It seems the belt had jumped its track, and was not al...