foobish

The Star Wars Alphabet

2011-10-09T18:34:00.000-07:00

Wish I had this 6 years ago!

The Star Wars Alphabet

Team ¡Mela-NO-MAS!

2011-10-01T22:50:00.000-07:00

My kids: "We walk to remind people to stay sun safe!"

Melanoma Walk 2011

It was exciting to hear that all the teams together raised over $29,000 for local research and treatment.

IT Confession

2011-09-29T11:14:00.001-07:00

Bah!

Just had the opportunity to apologize to a user for inadvertently forcing their network speed to be 1/10th of their capacity. Ugh.

You've heard that woodworker's pro tip: "Measure twice; cut once."

I'll now "cable-trace twice; configure once."

Martha's history with Melanoma

2011-09-28T09:32:00.000-07:00

My wife decided to write up a timeline of her journey with melanoma. It's been a bumpy ride, but I'm glad to be riding with her.

My history with Melanoma.

Join Team ¡Mela-no-mas!

2011-09-09T13:10:00.000-07:00

My wife and I are participating in the Melanoma Walk 2011. We'd love for you to join us!

Join Team Mela-no-mas!

Here's Martha's story:

I was diagnosed with Stage 3b Melanoma in September of 2009. I have been through 4 surgeries, a year of interferon therapy (an immune system treatment with side effects similar to bad flu) and am now participating in a clinical trial. I have had two recurrences of Melanoma which showed up as tumors in my back. I am currently cancer free, but there is no guarantee I will stay that way. I am walking for myself, and my husband’s cousin, Clint Smith, who lost his battle with Melanoma in 2008. I also walk for my children, who now have melanoma in their medical histories on both sides of the family.

Apple drops the UX ball

2011-08-20T02:54:00.000-07:00

This morning, in the middle of my cup of coffee, I noticed that the App Store icon on the Macbook was indicating that I had 3 updates to download and install.

"Oh! I wonder what needs updating?" I think to myself.

I click the icon and hop over to the Updates tab. Unfortunately, nothing exciting needs updating. But, I click on one of the Update buttons anyway.

Before any updating happens, I'm presented w/ a popup form and asked to sign in to my Apple account.

"Huh? I thought I was already signed in."

I enter my credentials, click login, and I'm presented w/ a message indicating that my account has been disabled for security reasons and needs to be reset. I get transferred to the webpage Apple's setup for account self-service (iForgot - makes me roll my eyes).

I reset my password and get properly signed into the App Store. Back to the Updates tab again and click on an Update button. Another warning pops up. I now need to update my payment information (mind you, I bought these apps months and months ago... I'm not buying anything right now). /sigh

I get my payment information updated (nothing changed, just had to confirm the info). I click on Update for a third time to update a piece of software. I'm presented w/ yet another popup warning. I need to agree to a new terms of use. Holy crap!

At this point, I'm pissed. And it's legal jargon TLDR situation. I quickly click the Agree button and fume as I go back to the Updates tab and click the Update button.

Finally... FINALLY, the update begins to download.

For the love, Apple, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!

All too often

2011-08-16T01:12:00.000-07:00

Phone rings...

Me: "Hello?"

Him: "Yeah, ... hello?"

Me: [sigh] "Hello."

Him: "Hello?"

Me: "Are you calling fo-"

Him: "Yeah, uh, is this Petsmart?"

Me: "No. You have the wrong number."

Without a word, [click]

Lego Heroica

2011-07-18T15:18:00.000-07:00

My son had a birthday last week. Instead of a party, he opted for a trip to the Lego store in Chandler, AZ. We'd never been... and I'll admit that I was as excited as he was.

Before I get ahead of myself, I want to call out one of the employees at the store. Tiffany was amazing. She made our birthday/first-time visit a truly memorable one. I don't know if it was simply because we were the first customers in the store that day, but she went out of her way for us - making sure we were enjoying ourselves, found what we needed, offered smart product suggestions, and even guided us to the nearest bathroom when an urgent need was made known. :) High-five, Tiffany!

Here are some photos from our trip.

My find-of-the-day was a Lego Heroica set: Castle Fortaan.

Heroica is a new game from Lego that basically serves as an introduction to fantasy boardgames. The set we picked up is the larger set out of the 4 currently available. After cracking open the box, you build 'rooms' and connecting paths that can then be combined in a myriad of arrangements to form the board for your game. The game features different classes of heroes (wizard, knight, druid, etc.), weapons, potions, treasure, my daughter's favorite: keys for locked doors, and several other fun elements. The complexity is simple enough for our 5 year-old to play along, incredibly engaging for our 7 year-old, and nerdy enough for this thirty-something dad.

We've played only 2 games so far and our family loves it. It's been fun to watch Joey and Abby celebrate together when they take down enemies and console each other when wounded. With three other sets available and plenty of room for 'house rules', I'm sure we'll be playing this game over and over again.

Buy Lego Heroica on Amazon.com

Need to try this

2011-07-18T14:05:00.000-07:00

http://lifehacker.com/5822092/marinate-hot-dogs-fruit-and-even-steaks-for-extra-flavor-on-the-grill

I really need to try this... those pineapples sound amazing!

Ironically Gracefull Bike Crash

2011-06-22T08:25:00.000-07:00

http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrismenning/ironically-graceful-bike-crash?s=mobile

Confusion

2011-06-20T13:09:00.000-07:00

I was gifted a fire pit for Father's Day. Tonight, I watched my daughter roast marshmallows while wearing glitter shoes, pajamas, swim goggles, and a wool Beanie.
What season is it?

The Oatmeal: Misspelling

2011-06-16T07:15:00.000-07:00

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling

Epic! Read it now!

Smartphone Garage Door Opener

2011-06-16T06:46:00.000-07:00

http://hackaday.com/2011/06/15/an-even-simpler-smartphone-garage-door-opener/

Ooh... I think I may have found this weekend's project!

Skin Cancer Detection? There's an app for that

2011-06-16T04:27:00.000-07:00

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/06/15/6868777-skin-cancer-diagnosis-theres-an-app-for-that

Tron: Legacy Reconfigured

2011-06-16T02:39:00.000-07:00

I wasn't really wow'd by the movie, but I can't stop listening to Tron: Legacy Reconfigured. It's such a great collection of remixes. There is certainly great source material to work from. Daft Punk did a fantastic job w/ the OST.

My favorites:

Derezzed (Remixed by The Glitch Mob)

Adagio for Tron (Remixed by Teddybears)

New Therapies Offer Much-Needed Options for Patients with Melanoma

2011-06-15T07:47:00.000-07:00

http://www.cancer.gov/ncicancerbulletin/061411

Motivation

2011-06-15T03:16:00.000-07:00

Hoping my motivation is at the bottom of my coffee mug. I don't know where I left it!

@martha

Reginning

2011-06-14T14:48:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you've seen posts like this before. Some call it starting over. The writer makes an excuse or two for not posting more often, and then promises to bring more to the table in the future.

I call it Reginning.

I haven't collected any excuses for you but this blog is beginning again. This is definitely the first blog post I've written in a while. It feels good. I've got a fresh install of WordPress 3.2 RC1 and plenty of inspiration.

Watch this space for updates about Engage, maybe some photos, Android phone rambling, and probably inappropriate 'overheards'.

Overheard - "All fiery"

2011-06-14T14:28:00.000-07:00

Re: Arizona Fires...

Wife: "We need to pray and ask God to make it rain in Arizona."

Daughter: "Yeah, it's all fiery."

custom date parser for jQuery tablesorter

2010-02-16T04:55:00.000-07:00

I have a project that stores dates in "Feb 09, 2010" format and I've been loving the jQuery plugin - tablesorter - for the flexibility and convenience it offers. Unfortunately, the three parsers that ship as part of the tablesorter plugin (isoDate, usLongDate, and shortDate) never seem to work correctly when attempting to sort the dates in my tables. So, after banging on it for a while, I've come up w/ the following date parser. Feel free to alter as much as you'd like.


$(function() {
  var monthNames = {};
    monthNames["Jan"] = "01";
    monthNames["Feb"] = "02";
    monthNames["Mar"] = "03";
    monthNames["Apr"] = "04";
    monthNames["May"] = "05";
    monthNames["Jun"] = "06";
    monthNames["Jul"] = "07";
    monthNames["Aug"] = "08";
    monthNames["Sep"] = "09";
    monthNames["Oct"] = "10";
    monthNames["Nov"] = "11";
    monthNames["Dec"] = "12";
  $.tablesorter.addParser({
    id: 'bishDate',
    is: function(s) {
      return false;
    },
    format: function(s) {
      var hit = s.match(/([A-Za-z]{3})s(d{2}),s(d{4})/);
      var m = hit[1];
      m = monthNames[m];
      var d = "0" + hit[2];
      d = d.substr(d.length - 2);
      var y = hit[3];
      return "" + y + m + d;
    },
    type: 'numeric'
  });

  // then force your custom parser on the column you need
  $("#tproc").tablesorter({
    headers: {
      5: {sorter: 'bishDate'}
    }
  });

Hospital Bill

2009-12-29T06:34:00.000-07:00

Just looked at the hospital bill we got that covers all the things that have happened since Martha first got diagnosed w/ Melanoma (die cancer, die!) this past September...

So, this covers two surgeries, several 'minor procedures', imaging, visits, etc.:

Total hospital charges: $28,655.49
Adjustments to date: $-22,091.34
Amount pending from insurance: $229.85
Already paid by insurance: $-6,356.30
Already paid by patient: $0.00
Amount [we] owe now: $50.00

Wow! I'm not about to get into the current healthcare reform stuff (I'm not intellectually equipped to do so) ... but, wow, thank God for a job, a job that's a good job, and a job that provides insurance.

Get your Droid to look like your Droid in Mac OS X

2009-12-28T09:43:00.000-07:00

I've been enjoying my Droid for almost two months now and during that time, it's been connected to my MacBook repeatedly as I experiment w/ the 'right way' to move music/movies back and forth (still haven't found the right solution; that's a post for another day).

I suppose you could call me "visu-anal-ly retentive". It irked me a little that my Droid was represented by a default, generic drive icon on the desktop and in the finder. I decided that I ought to try putting together an icon to represent the red-eyed wonder.

After a few minutes of searching, I found an image that I thought would work as an icon w/o looking too lame. I threw it into Acorn, cut away the background pixels, and saved it as a 512x512 32-bit PNG (w/ transparency). I thought I'd be able to export the image as an icon directly from Acorn... alas, it was not so. More searching revealed a utility called 'Img2icns' and it did just the trick. [lost the icon, sorry].

Once you've got your icon, right-click on your Droid in a finder window and select 'Get Info'. Then you can drag your icon right onto the 'Droid' in the Get Info dialog. That should do it.

My wife's new blog

2009-12-19T13:32:00.000-07:00

Martha has been documenting her journey ever since being diagnosed with melanoma earlier this fall. It's been nice getting to watch her put her thoughts, feelings, worries, and joys into words. Unfortunately, she's been growing tired of the limitations of her current setup and has been longing for a real blogging platform. Fortunately, she's married to a fan of WordPress and he happens to have spare webspace.

So, while we work to move her previous content to the new WP install, go ahead and bookmark This is Martha.

UPDATE: She's mostly moved in to the new blog!

Overheard of the night

2009-11-30T13:37:00.000-07:00

"I remember the first time you cleaned up my vomit."

"I don't."

[romantically] "I do."

Week 1 with Droid

2009-11-15T16:39:00.000-07:00

I've got to say, I'm still overcome with surprise and wonder that this powerful little device was a birthday gift (thanks, mom & dad!) What a shock!

From the few seconds it took to tell my Droid that, yes, I have a Google account and provide my credentials, I was in awe. All of the sudden, all my contacts were populated over the air. No importing CSV files with mismatched fields. No screwing around with synchronization conduits and cables. It just worked. And it was fantastic.

It's been somewhat fun making my iPhone-owning friends jealous of how easy it is to toggle wifi or bluetooth on or off. If only I could say the same about the camera. Perhaps the speed/quality issue will be resolved in the fabled Dec 11 patch?

I've thoroughly enjoyed using this phone over the last week. Best phone ever.

Craftsman

2009-11-05T10:20:00.000-07:00

"The critical distinction between a craftsman and an expert is what happens after a sufficient level of expertise has been achieved. The expert will do everything she can to remain wedded to a single context, narrowing the scope of her learning, her practice, and her projects. (You can make good money by doing this.) The craftsman has the courage and humility to set aside her expertise and pick up an unfamiliar technology or learn a new domain." -- Dave Hoover

There needs to be a word to describe an 'unavoidable overheard'

2009-11-05T05:03:00.000-07:00

There's an older couple at a table near me sharing a pair of iPod earbuds. It's quite cute. Periodically, he'll (loudly) comment to her about when this song came out, or when the artist died, or how old he was when his dad caught him listening to 'those bands'.

Cute until he starts talking about politics and exposes himself as one that doesn't struggle with racism... he's quite comfortable with it.

And with that, I'm packing up my stuff. Loudly.

Fringe Addiction

2009-10-29T12:48:00.000-07:00

I was just made aware that my favorite TV show of late, Fringe, has been trumped by the most boring sport to watch ever… lousy baseball.

And baseball with the Yankees is even worse.

Oh, and cancer sucks. Let’s keep things in perspective.

Tough

2009-10-26T09:46:00.000-07:00

Today is my first day back at work since my wife had her second surgery post discovery of melanoma. Thankfully, reports are showing that the melanoma should be gone, but … it’s been tough today. It was tough leaving her behind at home, alone. It was tough leaving the kids at preschool. And it was tough driving away from all of them and toward ‘work’.

Readernaut

2009-08-29T03:15:00.000-07:00

I'm really digging the Readernaut webservice.

I've been reading a lot recently and it's been fun to track my progress, reflect a little on each book, and do a little planning ahead on my reading list. The user interface is fantastic. While it is currently in beta, it feels quite polished and that alone inspires me to use it. In all honesty, it's most likely just a waste of time. Participating doesn't really get anything done. But, it's a great way to keep track of which nerdy Star Wars books you have left to read.

Go sign up and add me as a friend!

MacHeist 3

2009-04-03T14:00:00.000-07:00

Get 12 fantastic mac apps for an insane $39!

Launch Postbox's Profile Manager on a mac

2009-04-02T06:36:00.000-07:00

I've used Firefox and Thunderbird for a long time on the PC/Linux sides of the fence(s). Recently, I discovered Postbox at work and it's been serving my IMAP client needs very well.

I decided to install it on my macbook the other day and configured it for my IMAP account at work. When I wanted to create another profile for my personal Gmail account, I was stumped as to how to invoke Postbox's Profile Manager. Surely it had one. It's based on Thunderbird! I'm sure I could guess at the shortcut syntax for the PC, but on the mac, I felt pretty noobish.

So, after some hunting, I found some instructions for starting Thunderbird's profile manager on a mac... In a terminal window, type the following:

/Applications/Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/thunderbird-bin -p &

Apparently, the "&" at the end of that line just tells Terminal to quit after launching the Profile Manager.

So, I tried the following for Postbox:

/Applications/Postbox.app/Contents/MacOS/postbox-bin -p &

It worked perfectly!

First 10 Songs

2009-03-11T16:44:00.000-07:00

Instructions: Go into your media player of choice (iTunes, Songbird, Winamp, etc.), arrange all your songs alphabetically, then list the first 10 that show up. And be honest.

A&E - Goldfrapp

A). Shepherds of the Northern Pasture - Joy Electric

Able to Love - Benny Benassi & The Biz

Acquiesce - Stavesacre

Adagio & Transfiguration - Final Fantasy Movie

Adagio for Strings - DJ Tiësto

Agnus Dei / Worthy - Third Day

Alive - Daft Punk

Alive - Drain S.T.H.

All Around Me - Flyleaf

Your turn.

2005 called...

2009-03-07T17:24:00.000-07:00

... and apparently wants it's broken theme back.

Obviously there are some images missing and such. But I liked this theme back in the day and may try re-polish it.

Task Accountability Test

2009-02-25T02:42:00.000-07:00

Work tasks:

Windows 7 driver issues

Feedly install

php + GD2 experimentation [finally making progress!]

Kuler install and UA theme prod

IA research (win app?)

email Ginny & Karin re: doteduguru.com

Personal Stuff

reply to volunteer teacher re: lesson planning for Sunday

Worldmark by Wyndham

2009-02-24T12:34:00.000-07:00

For the love, what do I have to do to get these Worldmark by Wyndham people to stop calling me? I've never been to one of their 'pitches'; haven't signed up for any of their 'vacation giveaway' lists. I've actually added the number below as a contact on my phone called "Do Not Want" and set the ringer to 'none'. I called this morning and left a message demanding to be taken off the list. And yet, still they call.

Stop calling me, 916.285.7644!

UPDATE 2.25.09 11:08am: called the number again, got another number that I could call to speak to a 'live agent': 1.800.365.7814. Called... it's been busy for at least a half hour.

UPDATE 2.27.09 2:03pm: called the 800 number listed above... it's now "no longer in service". fantastic. called main number (916.285.7644) and left another message... this time w/ a more 'irrate' feel to it.

Finger Joy at Work

2009-02-18T13:18:00.000-07:00

Mmm... my fingers are in bliss at work.

New job & New skills

2009-02-12T03:16:00.000-07:00

I started my new job last Monday and I'm really excited about the things I'm going to learn while here. It's strange to 'grow up' in my IT skills at one location for 9 years and then end up in a place where things are pretty different. There's much less reliance on Windows servers, little to no Outlook use (yes!), and I actually get to work on web development projects. It's bizarre to walk through the hallways and see so many Macs amongst the Windows machines. It'll be interesting to get my feet wet supporting the Mac side of the force.

There's a lot of *nix server management that's being done w/ vi. I need to get much more comfortable w/ this editor. It's pretty awkward to use right now. Though, I do admire it's power. I need to make myself a command ref. I can stick to the side of my monitor...

Movie age limits

2009-01-19T08:17:00.000-07:00

Well, I have the good fortune of fighting a cold today. Thankfully, the kids have been in good moods and Martha's been sweet enough to let me sleep in and has assumed most of the load of entertaining/directing the kids.

I started watching the extended edition of Fellowship of the Ring while they were napping. I made it an hour in before Joey came out and asked permission to 'wake up'. I, of course, paused the movie and began mulling over when the right time would be to introduce him to the Lord of the Rings series and even Star Wars. He knows of Star Wars... I have ~~too much licensed product in my house for it to be avoided.~~ almost enough Star Wars stuff and he's asked me who a few characters are, what ships are called, etc. But he hasn't seen any of the movies.

I'll confess that I long for the day he digests the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings movies with me. They'll be important days in the geekling's life. They'll be planned out, scheduled for, and celebrated.

But before all that, I have several questions to ask myself. I figured I'd share mine and perhaps collect a few from you.

How much stock to I put in the rating system that's already in place? (G, PG, PG-13, etc.)

How much violence is too much? Is there such a thing?

When do I want to talk to my son/daughter about killing in movies/stories?

When do I want to talk to my son/daughter about the need to kill?

How many years of love will my kids need under their belts before they face the likes of the Lidless Eye or Darth Vader killing Kenobi? Or Luke's whining, for that matter?

I'm sure I'll come up w/ more. How will you decide when to expose your kids to these stories? How have you decided? Thoughts?

4.5

2009-01-14T07:26:00.000-07:00

My oldest is four and a half today. Hard to believe.

And happy birthday, Ian!

Peace

2009-01-13T14:31:00.000-07:00

Wow. I had a great job interview today. How often do you get to say that?

Inspiration

2009-01-12T15:31:00.000-07:00

In light of the job interview I have tomorrow, I got home from a meeting tonight to find this above my desk:

Got me all misty-eyed. I'll admit it.

It feels good to be loved. My kiddos are such great artists. And their mom is the one that deserves a poster.

borked Macbook

2009-01-11T15:36:00.000-07:00

Several days ago, my poor son knocked over a glass of carbonated lemonade... a decent amount of it made its way into the back vents of my wife's Macbook. :(

After going through panic and some mourning, I got to the place where you just say, "Well, it's out of warranty, and not currently working. What have I got to lose?" and look up a diy guide for taking it apart.

Thankfully, it's not the first laptop I've had to take apart. I have to say though, it was the lemoniest. :(

Amazon.com 25 Days of Free Holiday Music

2008-12-15T08:29:00.000-07:00

Amazon.com MP3 Downloads: 25 Days of Free Holiday Music.

Dream job?

2008-12-15T06:09:00.000-07:00

Ran across my dream job (I think) at the U of A's College of Pharmacy last week.

It sounds like many of the IT responsibilities I had in the past - w/ the added focus of web development. I've been wanting to get into the development side of things for a long time now. It's exciting to think that this could be my 'in'.

If you're the praying type. Please pray for 1) an interview opportunity, and 2) that I'd accurately represent what I bring to the table in that interview.

The coolest part of Joey's train set

2008-12-14T16:14:00.000-07:00

We setup Joey's huge Thomas train set on Grammie & Papa's dining room table last night. Each year around Christmas time, they usually setup a slot car track. They changed it up this year. Joey begged to go back again tonight to play w/ it. Here's part of the reason:

I wish the quality was a little better. I only had my phone w/ me.

Communion at the gat

2008-12-11T16:56:00.000-07:00

As a gathering ministry team member I got to do many media projects. Most of them were the tossaways that were created each week and a lot of them were song slide decks. Every once in a while, a need for a slide deck would come up that wasn't a song. I guess, with their rarity, I enjoyed them a bit more.

This one was one of my favorites.

From what I remember, we were going to be doing a lengthier version of the communion ritual one sunday night and the team wanted some art to be displayed on-screen that would urge people to pay a little more attention to what was being said, sung, and proposed.

Download Powerpoint deck

I was aiming for an older style of lo-fi line art w/ low-impact text intrusions and I think I pulled it off. I was really satisfied with this one. I don't know if the slide deck itself led anyone to a deeper encounter or anything, but I like to think that it played its role.

Casas Student Ministries (2003)

2008-12-11T16:17:00.000-07:00

A while back, I was asked by the youth minister at Casas to put together a website that would reflect the identity of their program and showcase what they offer youth and parents.

I came through the youth program at Casas long ago and it excited me to give them a presence on the web that'd be consulted by youth and parents to stay up-to-date on the high school and middle school programs. What was unique about this project was creating the site in a way that would allow one of the staff workers, Kara, to post content updates using Macromedia's Contribute software. I created the site using Macromedia's Fireworks and Dreamweaver products. Dreamweaver let me build-in sections of pages that were tagged as editable by Contribute software - provided the user had the right authenication. The system worked really well and we enjoyed sharing the process of keeping the site updated.

I was really pleased w/ the look of the site. I think it had a relevant feel for the youth that would visit and I was told that the information was easily retrievable by parents and staff workers.

Legolust

2008-12-08T15:29:00.000-07:00

I saw this in the toy section the other day while browsing with my son. It had me drooling. Looks like Amazon's got it going for $30 off! If I pull off a job soon, this may have to be a Christmas present to myself. :)

Diary of a Singl-ish Dad - Day 6

2008-12-06T14:31:00.000-07:00

Today began as most of the others this past week, but with one small difference. I knew she was coming home today.

That colored everything I did today. Grammie was very sweet and took both kids Christmas shopping with her this morning. Then they got to play with Papa and Uncle James for a while in the afternoon. That gave me a lot of time to rest and get some things done for my sweet love around the house - uninterrupted! It was awesome.

I was really looking forward to surprising Martha with the Christmas lights I'd put up on Thursday. And her reaction was better than I expected. I wasn't expecting anything overwhelming - but I could tell she was touched and it put a big smile on her face. Merry Christmas indeed.

We - unfortunately - had to say goodbye to Uncle James tonight. He's heading to San Diego tomorrow to sign papers and begin the 'move in' process. Though, even with the looming goodbye, we had a ton of fun with him and are looking forward to being back together in a few weeks for Christmas.

...

Ahh... she's home.

Diary of a Singl-ish Dad - Day 4 & 5

2008-12-05T07:28:00.000-07:00

Tired. Both days.

Looking forward to Mama comin' home.

Abby does nap her way

2008-12-03T16:48:00.000-07:00

This is how I found my daughter at the end of her nap the other day. Cracked me up.

Diary of a Singl-ish Dad - Day 3

2008-12-03T08:54:00.000-07:00

What a difference a day makes?

Sadly, the news from up in Vegas wasn't good today. Lang's struggling through a bad day. Keep praying.

The kids and I stayed in pajamas until nap time. And even that was late. I finally got them settled down to rest at about 3:30. On the bright side, I did actually pull off something productive and got my shelf installed when I should have been making the kids' lunch. :) Now I just have to decide what to put on the shelf.

I'm hoping to switch gears post-nap and have a really pleasant - and non-slackery - night. I think oven-baked pizza and Charlotte's Web is on the menu.

Diary of a Singl-ish Dad - Day 1 & 2

2008-12-02T08:53:00.000-07:00

My beautiful wife left town yesterday with her good friend. They headed up to Las Vegas late in the afternoon to lend support to my friend Lang's fiancée as she waits on his healing. Sounds like Lang's taken a turn for the worse and that's weighing on us all... Keep praying.

Yesterday was an interesting day. It marked the end of a nine year career in IT for ADE/KLA Tencor. It was the first time I'd lost a job. I'm guessing it won't be the last. Offshoring could easily hit me again. It was sad to walk out of our building with my friend and former boss knowing that we'd never leave that parking lot again. And sad to think that there are some co-workers that I'll likely not see again. I hope we all find work soon.

The comforting thing is that I know I'll see the friends I made again over the years. My former boss happens to be one of my closest friends; it'll be hard not to see him. Some folks I'll be able to stay in touch with over IM or Facebook. Hooray for the webitron.

In a way, I was kinda spared yesterday from thinking too much about my predicament. With Martha furiously packing and trying to get ready for a sudden five-day trip, I didn't have time to wallow or really even reflect. I did my best to help her out the door and then turned my attention to wrangling these two kids that keep hanging around here.

Speaking of kids... I think my daughter's rash is either slowing down or starting to fade a bit. We discovered it Sunday morning while getting ready for church. She's had a rash similar to it before and it turned into some crazy hot tub virus or something and she had to be treated w/ some scary antibiotics that kept doctor, pharmacist, and parents concerned for a while. Thankfully, she got seen rather quickly this time and has already got 3 doses of non-scary antibiotics in her. I'll be praying that the spots are gone before Thursday.

This morning, Abby and I did some shopping while Joey was in preschool. It was strange to go shopping the day after I lost my job, but the vast majority of our merchandise was bought with gift cards of some sort. I picked up a new Dewalt drill that was going for a crazy sale price. I loved my previous drill, but the Makita battery packs are hard to find and expensive. The Home Depot trip was really only a time-killer until we could get into Costco. Abby was really well behaved and pulled off many smiles from strangers. If only that would work as currency... that'd come in handy.

With grocery shopping out of the way, we went to pick up Joey. We stopped to make a quick sea turtle in the wet sand outside his classroom. It's amazing how quickly wet sand will claim a previously clean 2 year-old's outfit.

I then raced through three chaotic projects at once... prepping the kids' lunches, cleaning out the freezer, and putting the groceries away. Whew...

Then we made these:

Now... I shall nap.

Pray for Lang

2008-11-17T08:50:00.000-07:00

My friend Lang was horribly injured in a fall while hiking last Monday. His story is being blogged here as it develops. Thank God it's continuing to develop!

Dropbox

2008-11-05T17:11:00.000-07:00

I just got done installing the Dropbox client in my fresh Ubuntu 8.10 install. And my files are magically syncing away. I've been blown away by this service and was stoked when I read that they had a Linux client available. What a great piece of web-backed software.

WP 2.7 beta 1

2008-11-04T09:45:00.000-07:00

I just upgraded to WordPress 2.7 beta 1... I'm overwhelmed by the new Dashboard. I haven't gotten any further than that. It's gorgeous. I can't wait to get 'comfy' w/ this release.

Lume the Mad » Blog Archive » The “Zombie” Portion of the pre-Wrath Event Is Flawed

2008-10-28T04:14:00.000-07:00

Lume the Mad » Blog Archive » The “Zombie” Portion of the pre-Wrath Event Is Flawed.

Amen! I hated trying to get out of town to start questing only to be killed 7 or 8 times on the way and wasting the first 20-30m of my gametime.

Heroes Season 2

2008-10-23T02:28:00.000-07:00

Is it just me, of did the second season of Heroes finish in a way that made the Writers' Strike of last year... really evident? It felt really anticlimactic.

The wife and I need to watch all the extras on the S2 DVDs now. Hopefully, the extras will add a little more richness to the way the season ended?

Patch dread

2008-10-22T07:55:00.000-07:00

Leading up to last Tuesday (October 14), I'd been splitting World of Warcraft time between my desktop and my laptop. Yes, there are times that I like to sit out in the living room w/ the wife and play WoW while she watches Dancing with the Stars. Well, in the week or so previous to the day Blizzard released the gigantic patch¹, I'd noticed just how much data the background downloader was going to end up pulling down. I began to dread doing it once for my desktop and then again for the laptop.

I discovered yesterday that there was no need to dread. Apparently, when WoW gets installed, there are no registry entries created or custom dlls written to system folders. WoW lives in a folder that can be conveniently copied to another computer - creating an up-to-date install! There is much rejoicing. I did not want to sit through another 3.0.2 download.

1 - WoW patch 3.0.2 was over 1.2 Gigabytes!

WP Plugin 'Live Update'?

2008-10-15T16:35:00.000-07:00

Holy cow. Leave the Wordpress world for a few years and the features just seem amazing. Apparently, the latest version (or perhaps one a few releases earlier) notifies you when you have a plugin that is out of date and will allow you to update it from w/in the admin interface. No more tracking down the plugin author's website, downloading, unzipping, uploading to your server, and configuring.

Perfect.

Back in action!

2008-10-15T16:18:00.000-07:00

It feels good to finally have a self-hosted install of Wordpress going again. Gone are the days of lechoso.com and foobish.org of years past [no links as they're not active domains].

I've returned to domain ownership / blog runnership simply out of a desire to get some of my old web work online in some portfolio form. I'm in the middle of a job hunt and have been encountering too many applications that I have to skip as I've got no previous work that clients still have online. Here's hoping the portfolio build process goes quickly and smoothly. I've got a job to get!

Ubiquitous Chrome

2008-09-05T04:11:00.000-07:00

I'm enjoying browsing in Chrome, but I'm really missing the fairly-fresh Firefox extension: Ubiquity.

I beg of you, Google, either enable an addon feature or build Ubiquity right into Chrome. Pretty please?

UPDATE: I just remembered that Chrome has an open-source project behind it: Chromium. It's conceivable that someone other than Google could build this functionality into Chrome!

"Words They Used"

2008-09-04T23:39:00.000-07:00

Fairly interesting visualization

Mass Update

2008-08-28T04:42:00.000-07:00

Wow. A lot has happened since I took down that tree in late-June.

During July, my family and I spent 2 wonderful weeks in Maine. It was my first time visiting the area and it was amazing! I've gathered photos into a set on Flickr. My son, Joey, turned 4 while we were there and we had a great time celebrating his birthday.

What else has happened? Oh, I bought a new (used) car. Managed to pull off a 2000 Nissan Maxima when my friend bought a truck. I'm loving it... well, except for the 90m trips down I-10 in stop-and-go traffic.

I also found out my end date (shutdown) at my current employer. That was nice to find out - it's been up in the air for months. So... mid-December, I'm hoping to be starting a new job.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Victory!

2008-06-29T16:36:00.000-07:00

I thought I was going to be beating on this stump all day. Thankfully, it gave up the fight right before lunch! Unfortunately, it's a heavy beast and I can't move it into my backyard for ... well, temporary hiding purposes. I need to get it reduced in size/weight in order to get rid of it. I also need to figure out what to replace it with.

beans

2008-06-28T14:21:00.000-07:00

[I walk into the master bedroom w/ freshly heated baked beans and sit down to work at the computer.]

Mar: "I was praying that you'd know to bring me ice cream."

Me: "I'm sorry, I had beans on my mind."

Mar: "No. Obviously, you weren't listening to the Holy Spirit."

DIY ipod dock

2008-06-25T01:31:00.000-07:00

After wanting to do it for some time (inspiration), I finally got around to making my own ipod dock last night. Here are the results:

I'm extremely pleased with the results.

post Father's Day... post

2008-06-16T07:37:00.000-07:00

What a weekend. My wife made sure Saturday was an enjoyable one for me, knowing that typical Sundays leave us all wiped out. I ended up having a wonderful day w/ the fam and the feeling rolled into the end of Sunday. Now I just have to wait for the Father's Day present to show up on the doorstep. Woo-new-camera-hoo!

Thanks, Martha, for my Father's Days.

Quest: Get your son to sleep w/o his light on

2008-06-16T06:27:00.000-07:00

Promising Solution: Spoka

Abby's two

2008-06-07T01:44:00.000-07:00

I still can't believe it's already here. The girl had a perfect day. We spent plenty of time w/ Grammie and Papa... and she got some fun presents that she just loves. She even got serenaded on the phone by some of her friends. I think she really felt special.

Abby's Second Birthday from Daniel Bishop on Vimeo.

God, she's beautiful and I love her... even though she was up 7 times last night.

bish vs. WU... fight!

2008-06-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

I just managed to win my three day fight with Windows Update. What an ordeal to get updates to install! I figured I'd post my experience here so that anyone that happens to have a similar problem might find the solution or at least a direction they should start looking should they happen to find my blog in their search results.

Problem

3 days ago, I got a user's laptop to the point where it needed 11 updates from "Microsoft Update". I don't believe that the specific updates were an issue, but for the sake of full disclosure, I'll list them:

KB943649

KB945185

KB907417

KB943973

KB947355

KB945432

KB943985

KB950213

KB950380

KB950241

After displaying the list of updates that needed to be installed, I clicked "Install". Normally, for 11 updates, I'd let the machine sit for fifteen or twenty minutes before checking to see if it was done installing. That day happened to be a fairly slow day so I sat and watched it out of the corner of my eye while fiddling w/ my Twitter client's request-rate-limits (Oh, Twitter... /sigh). Within a few minutes, a result window popped up declaring that all 11 updates failed to install. I didn't think it was a big deal... restarted the laptop and tried again. Same result.

Troubleshooting

"Ok, I've had this trouble before." I recalled. "What did I do?"

Previously, when encountering this issue, I'd perform the following:

Stop the Automatic Updates service.

Navigate to "C:WindowsSoftwareDistributionDownload" and delete all contents.

Navigate to "C:WindowsSoftwareDistributionEventCache" and delete all contents.

Start the Automatic Updates service.

Re-visit Microsoft/Windows Update site and get updates detected and installed.

Normally, that'd take care of it. It didn't yesterday. I'd empty those folders, restart the service, return to Microsoft Update and upon detecting the 11 updates I needed to install, it would inform me that it had already downloaded the necessary data and wouldn't require any time to do so. BAH!

After fighting with it some more today (wasting time!), I remembered that the company I work for has a WSUS machine setup at corp. HQ in California. They've used this WSUS machine to block certain updates that have not been qualified by corp. IT yet or have been marked as disruptive to internal applications. At this point, I assumed that this was the cause of my problem.

I unplugged the network cable, turned on the wireless card, and hopped onto our 'test' wifi that isn't connected to the internal company network. The Download and EventCache folders were still empty, so I figured I had a good shot of getting the updates installed this time. However, I had the same symptom: "11 updates, 0MB, 0Min."

"What the hell?"

Solution

I did some more poking around in the SoftwareDistribution directory. I found a "C:WindowsSoftwareDistributionWuRedir" directory w/ some .cab files and .xml files sitting in subdirectories. After stopping the AU service again, I removed the whole "WuRedir" directory and restarted the AU service.

Still on the external wireless, I revisited Microsoft Update. This time: "11 updates, thirty-something MB, 10Min." Fifteen minutes later, they were all downloaded and installed successfully.

Finally.

7 Years

2008-06-02T03:57:00.000-07:00

It's more than a feeling. It's not about being compatible. It's about Christ-empowered commitment to love through thought, word, and deed.

And my wife's made it incredibly easy.

I'm looking forward to 7 more years. I love you, Martha.

Passing down the tradition

2008-05-18T16:59:00.000-07:00

My son and I spent some time playing w/ my old Lego collection today. As I was putting him to bed, I was reminded of a Lego set I saw in the store as a 12 year old and just WANTED. My dad encouraged me to save my money and after several months, I had the $50 necessary to buy that set.

Tonight, 18 years later... I rebuilt it using instructions I found online. I was surprised how many of the original pieces I actually still had. I got most of it built aside from the ailerons and the related linkages. I was missing too many of the small technic parts... I wonder if I can purchase just the pieces I'm missing somewhere in order to finish it off?

Dead ants, Dead ants, Dead ants!

2008-05-18T02:06:00.001-07:00

A letter of thanks.

Dear Terro,

Your liquid poison-based traps worked ridiculously fast. My wife and I are amazed at how well they work. We've been fighting an ant infestation behind our oven for almost a week. Thank you, thank you, thank you for creating a non-messy, effective way to eliminate the intruders in our kitchen!

The Bishops

The World Ends With You

2008-05-18T02:06:00.000-07:00

If you're a DS owner... pick up this game. I've had a decent amount of time w/ this title over the past few days due to my girls being sick. It's delectable.

Strep throat in the house

2008-05-16T05:36:00.000-07:00

Both my wife and my 23month-old daughter are sick w/ Strep throat. :(

Sucks not being able to do much for my wife as she shivers under two heavy blankets and moans...

Happy Birthday, Vagrant Story!

2008-05-16T05:34:00.000-07:00

Well, they haven't forgotten about it... If only this were a sign that Square Enix was going to give this game new life on the Wii or DS.

Games as chores?

2008-05-15T11:45:00.000-07:00

I recently took stock of all the games I've got sitting around the house that I just never finished. Some got started on the PC and then I allowed my attention to be torn away toward some new release on the DS. Some titles, unfortunately, I just got bored with. For fun's sake, let's take a tour of the un-done:

PC:

Portal (actually started this back up the other day, good times)

HL2 Episodes 1 and 2

Wii:

Zelda Twilight Princess

Zelda Wind Waker (I know it's a Gamecube title... playing it on the Wii)

Super Paper Mario

DS:

Final Fantasy III

Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings

The World Ends With You (actively playing, ridiculously good)

Professor Layton

Phoenix Wright

Zelda Phantom Hourglass

Puzzle Quest

Children of Mana

Trauma Center (holy hard game, batman!)

Metroid Prime Hunters

There you have it.

Now, I'm sure I'll finish most of these games eventually... but I'm amused by the fact that I feel this chore-like obligation to finish all of them; even though they are forms of entertainment. What's up with that? I suppose I could look at it this way... I'm just savoring each title over a long period of time?

to Twitter?

2008-04-16T03:37:00.000-07:00

What's the deal w/ Twitter clients breaking on my laptop. I've had three in the last couple weeks. First, Adobe's AIR stopped working which killed both Snitter and Twhirl in one shot. Then, after fleeing the AIR platform and installing Witty, that keeps crashing within a few minutes of usage. I'd really rather use a client than keep the Twitter site open in Firefox all the time. I guess I could go back to using the IM functionality and post/follow from Gtalk... :/

You can follow me here, by the way.

Liveblogging the return of "Jericho" (Season 2 Episode 1)

2008-02-12T20:59:00.002-07:00

9:00pm - Recap time... boom!

Bah... screw it, I want to watch.

Creative?

2007-12-18T23:43:00.000-07:00

So, it's getting more and more obvious to me that I long to be creative. More often, I'm finding myself daydreaming about a new career path... one that doesn't involve job responsibilities that can basically be described as putting out people's fires. I'd love to be in a job where I could produce something - where I could create.

As a step in that direction, I'm seriously considering getting a website up and running again. I'd like it to be a semi-personal space where I can hone my atrophying design skills and start to build some things to showcase to potential interviewers and employers.

Here's the question I keep coming back to:
What domain name do I register?

My old ones got taken by lame cybersquatter companies. Here's a list of names I'm considering:

bishless.com
foobish.org
whatthebish.com
...

Thoughts?

Lunch-tendo

2007-12-03T13:10:00.001-07:00

Odd observation of the day:

Sitting in an Eegee's for lunch, the tables on either side of me are populated by people talking about the Wii on one side and the DS on the other. The conversations are occurring at the same time. Neither table seems to acknowledge the other.

What are the odds?

I was tempted to try and participate in both conversations.

Prayer from children

2007-11-12T11:37:00.001-07:00

My wife sent me a link this morning that gave me pause.

Proud Amazement

2007-10-16T11:23:00.001-07:00

My wife just called and put my 3 year old son on the phone. He rattled off the sweetest little 'Pledge of Allegiance' I've ever heard.

University of Phoenix' cold heart

2007-10-16T10:21:00.001-07:00

So, after arguing w/ my financial 'counselor' and struggling to get in touch via phone w/ my academic counselor, I headed over to uopsucks.com for some therapeutic reading.

Instead, the flames of anger were fanned by this story that I think can still be found in Google's cache. Apparently, a young man attended one day of class before learning that he has stage 5 melanoma and was given a few weeks to live. After calling UoP to request his tuition be waived, he was instead offered a $300 discount on his next semester's tuition.

It took getting the local media involved to get the UoP administrators to alter their action. Ridiculous.

Uh oh...

2007-10-10T10:25:00.001-07:00

Just received an email from the HR manager... sudden All Hands meeting scheduled.

That can't be good news.

4 more weeks...

2007-10-09T20:45:00.001-07:00

Wow. I'm in the beginning of week 6 for the two classes I'm taking right now through the University of Phoenix (don't go through them, find anyone else). I'm really looking forward to being done w/ this block. Critical Thinking (CRT205) is driving me nuts w/ all its types of fallacies and arguments that are sound or valid... such a waste of time.

Crap, so is this...

Paddle Controller DS, baby!

2007-09-21T10:53:00.000-07:00

How cool will this be?!

I can't wait to see that hit the U.S.

It's been a while...

2007-09-20T16:40:00.000-07:00

My wife is amazing and my children are beautiful.
Apple's iPod nano is a joy.
I don't keep up w/ photo uploading and I am ashamed.

My employer doesn't care.

Oh, and http://uopsucks.com/

----------------
Now playing: Living Sacrifice - The Martyr
via FoxyTunes

I hate DRM

2007-08-03T07:13:00.000-07:00

I just remembered that I had bought some beautiful Guild Wars soundtracks a while ago and wanted to listen to them. Unfortunately, the files were only available as DRM-stuffed, WMA files. They worked yesterday in WMP9. I accidentally got upgraded to WMP11 overnight - thanks Automatic Updates - and now my licenses don't work.

I could strangle someone at MS. I just want to listen to my legally purchased music w/o hassle!

school's out for some summer

2007-07-11T14:35:00.000-07:00

No more papers
No more electronic books
No more 'i barely speak the english how you aspect me grade the paper?' instructor's looks

at least for a little while.

writing lessons with bish

2007-06-03T19:28:00.000-07:00

4 things I learned from writing my IT105 'practice' essay:

1. a weak, barely-detailed outline begets a weak, barely-detailed paper.
2. read your references, don't just mark them as references and try to work them in after you ramble out a 'paper' and realize that you have no citations (!).
3. disconnect your computer from the interweb. do it. it's amazing the amount of work you can get done in a coffee shop w/o wifi.
4. write with the word counter off... you won't fall into the trap of using 'filler adverbs'.

On that which was to be delivered on the 24th

2007-05-29T09:15:00.000-07:00

May 29 2007 7:35 AM - With delivery courier - Tucson,USA

...the most glorious words I've seen all day.

DHL Shipping?

2007-05-26T12:15:00.001-07:00

Don't use them. They're horrible.

Photos from our Thomas Trip

2007-05-20T10:08:00.000-07:00

Starts

2007-05-01T15:32:00.000-07:00

I've started two things this week.

I've started taking classes online through the University of Phoenix. I'm two days in and have found it fairly comfortable so far. The work hasn't been too hard but the load isn't too light either.

I'm starting... well, to chase a goal today. I signed up at traineo.com and I'm trying to lose 20lbs in the next 5 months. The method? Nintendo Wii. That's right, I'm going to play video games in my living room in order to lose weight. WiiSports and WarioWare: Smooth Moves are going to give me nightmares, I'm sure...

I'm excited about both.

Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales - first impression

2007-04-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

Now, I'm as warm-blooded, cheese burger-loving, and hetero as the next guy - so I'll admit to saying, "Meh" when I first heard about it. I didn't intend to pick this up at (evil game store) last night. I was hunting for Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords... of course, it wasn't in stock. I had store credit burning a hole in my pocket and wanted something new to play. Chocobo Tales lured me in w/ it's beautiful art and claims of fun through minigames, microgames, card battles, and plenty of multiplayer.

I'm only 2 hours in, so this isn't a full-fledged review... just a 'Holy decent purchase, Batman! This game is actually fun!'

The story holds to a typical FF setup... there are crystals, someone's going to steal/use them to destroy the world, you have to save it, along w/ all kinds of memorable 'characters' (white mages, black mages, cactuars, bahamut, etc). From what I've seen so far, the story is adequately interesting and amusing. Some of the dialog is hilarious... I encountered a troubled hamster w/ a lisp last night that ended his dialog w/ "Oh thnap!" I laughed so hard... and quickly ran to get my camera and take a picture.

The mini/micro games are surprisingly fun and have varying degrees of difficulty. Competing in them awards you more cards for Pop-up Duels... which are actually quite fun and engaging... (I've only recently received my 'Training Deck' that can hold 8 cards... but apparently, you do get to a 15 card deck at some point because that's what is required to play over the Nintendo WiFi connection. I'm really looking forward to trying that out.) The card battling is much better than I thought it would be, it has just enough complexity to keep it interesting and relies on traditional Final Fantasy elements to play out (CP, status conditions, etc). It's basically a Collectible Card Game in the cart... along w/ all the other fun stuff that is Chocobo Tales.

The last thing I wanted to mention is 'flow'. I was impressed w/ how everything flows together. Squeenix got it right here. The story leads you to mini games and microgames that you have to do well enough in to unlock the next part of the story or more cards to do better in Pop-up Duels. You have to succeed in Pop-up Duels in order to get further in the story. It sounds really simple when typing that out, but it has that Square Enix polish. Everything flows together really well. Perhaps when I get a few more hours under my belt, I'll throw together a 60-second review for the DS Life podcast.

Don't be afraid of this cartoon-y game. Playing it won't make you gay... though, it may make you late to work. Crap!

Joey's first prayer

2007-03-19T10:09:00.000-07:00

My two year old son said his first prayer on Friday night. You can only imagine the well of tears in our eyes... It went down like this:

We'd just left Villa (an awesome, family-owned Mexican restaurant on Tucson's NW side). Martha and I had our usual - red chili beef quesadilla and a carne asada burrito - and ordered a shredded beef taco for Joey... of which he had none. So, as we're driving out of the parking lot, we're all chit-chatting in the car...

"Stop talking a me! I pray to God." Mar and I were stunned... We got real quiet.

"Jesus, thank you for my taco."

That was it. And I think it was a fantastic start.

the Wife has a new look!

2007-03-08T22:21:00.000-07:00

I just got done massaging a new template for my wife's blog.

I think it came out pretty well. Looking good, hon!