Kevin's Life Exploration

As some of you may know, I dabble at playing the bass guitar. Mostly it is an off and on love affair, but lately it’s been off due to the bass I have at the house. I used to have the Church’s 5-string bass and Ampeg amp setting in my office and I loved playing it and practicing (Mostly when Laura was not around :> ). But the Church is using the bass again, so it stays at the Church, and I have been messing with an old 4-string guitar that has intonation problems, loose electronics and an uncomfortable neck.

Last week I mentioned to Laura that I wanted to get rid of it (she suggested putting it in the alley way, which is what we do with junk we don’t want and can’t sell). Anyway, I’ve been looking at basses lately and I think I found the one I want!!

Nice Eh!? Actually, no, I don’t want that one. I will settle for a nice 5-string again, but I just wanted to post that picture

It’s Saturday evening, I am finishing up some work for a DATA-COM client, coding away, listening to Neal Morse. Over the last 44.5 years, I have had a lot of favorite bands and musicians. Some have stood the test of time (Megadeth and Maynard Ferguson), but none of really touched me they way Neal’s music does. And, to top that off, since he left Spock’s Beard, all of the stuff that he has put out has been all Christian music.

Every single CD he has put out is just simple amazing. And they are not all the same. Most of them are progressive rock epics. He also has a couple of worship CDs released as well. But I really enjoy the Prog stuff the most. One of them called “Sola Scriptura” is about the life of Martin Luther. Luther changed Christianity like no other (except Jesus himself of course). Neal captures the whole store of Luther in an EPIC prog CD, consisting of only 4 songs, but lasts around 70 minutes! Simply amazing.

Anyway… I recently got the “Sola Scriptura and Beyone Live!” DVD, and it is just as good as all his other stuff, but LIVE… mistakes, improv and all. I wanted to post this here so that maybe someone else would get interested or may have never heard of him and would like his stuff. So, here is the trailer for the DVD.

If you are a fan of Prog Rock, check it out. Probably the upper top of musicians.

Enjoy!

Well, back to normal as to what we would call normal down here. This picture is hard to see, but unleaded gas price at 23rd and Nolana, $1.49 per gallon. Not too shabby

I took this photo on the way home from work yesterday from my ubah cell phone. I should have had my new camera with me, but that’ll have to do (click to see a large view, still rather blurry though).

After getting home and changing clothes, I finally went out and had my eyes checked. Not big change in Rx, I just needed to get new glasses really. So, after the eye exam, I awaited my darling princess (LJ) who would put up with me for over an hour as we tried to select some regular frames and then some frames for some sunglasses. Why was I waiting for LJ? Well she works there at the place, so not only did she help me pick out some great frames, that’ll make me look SEXAH! but, we got the family discount on them as well! It also gave us a chance to chat and catch up since we don’t see each other too often these days.

My new regular glasses will be ready today, I’ll pick them up after work, but my sunglasses were special order, so they won’t be ready until the 13th.

I am glad it is Thursday! Weekend is almost here, not that it really means much anymore! I had planned on some serious coding today, but as usual, I got side tracked early in the morning and have not been able to get back on track yet.

It really struck me yesterday morning. I stroll into the office around my usual 7am time. No one else is there yet, which I think is great! I get a lot done between 7am and 8am. Anyway, as I was doing some of my morning things, I noticed Musak had Christmas music on, then it struck me! Ack! It’s Christmas time! Well, at that certain time, I was not too excited about the holidays, but the holiday feeling is slowly starting to seep into my system.

So, I’ve got my TSO (Trans Siberian Orch) backgrounds up. Last night I searched the DirecTV listing for Christmas shows to record on the DVRs. I added my regular old christmas sugar cookies to the grocery list (The ones you just pop in the oven for 20 minutes, they have like Christmas trees on them). It’s take Laura a week or two more before she gets in the spirit, she has to wait until classes are all done. But, I’ll probably coax her into putting up the tree this weekend.

Health wise, I am doing better. It’s been kinda rough without the caffeine, but I am surviving. I haven’t had any headaches in the past day or two, so that is getting better. Wednesday after working I am going to have my eyes checked (finally), it’s been probably 5 years since I had them checked.

Until Next time!

We hope that all of our friends and family had a nice and happy Thanksgiving. As some of you know, we decided to stay home due to some health issues that I had a few days before the Thanksgiving holidays. I am doing fine, I just sure miss my caffeine We stocked up on Koolaid packets, Sprites and Caffeine free DP’s. I still have our De-Caf tea, which we have always used, and now we are using De-Caf coffee as well. The De-Caf DPs are eh… ok I guess. Not like the real thing, definitely.

As for Thanksgiving, Early Thanksgiving morning Laura and I ventured to HEB and got in our shopping before the crowds. Then we decided not to have our Thanksgiving meal until later in the afternoon. Laura spent most of her day working on a paper for her History class at UTPA, and I relaxed and worked on a conversion for one of our clients (more on that in a bit). Then around 5:00 we had a great little meal, just Laura and I. Some ham, green bean casserole, mashed tatters, roles, and cranberries hmmm. It was great. We both were wishing we were in Austin for Mom’s cookin’, but this will work.

Must of today has been about the same as yesterday. Laura working on her History paper and I am working on the AS400 conversion. Laura made us a wonder breaklunch around 11, then she did some cleaning and misc stuff, then back to work on the paper. I did a bit of sweeping around the house and just now shut down the client AS400 I have sitting here, about to relax, figure out what we are going to do for supper and watch some TV or something.

Speaking of the AS400

There it sits on my office floor. This is for a DATA-COM Client, I am in the process of migrating their files and programs off their S/36 and onto the AS400. Which is turning into more work than I thought, but that is ok. Up to V5R2, IBM included a Migration Utility, which helped with the migration process. But it is kinda finicky and doesn’t always do the right thing. But as of V5R3 (which this machine has), that utility is not included! But, actually it’s better. This way I get to monitor the migration process, make a list of programs that failed the conversion, etc. I have restored all the files and libraries, compiled all the programs and screen formats. There were maybe 20-30 programs that did not compile successfully, so I will look at them tomorrow. After that, I have to work on a solution for a little dilemma associated with the move to the AS400.

One of the tricks we used on The S/36 will not work on the AS400. SUBROC, a subroutine that we used to do some printing tricks will not work on the AS400 (actually it does not exist on the AS400). So, I’ll have to figure the best way to get around that. I have 2-4 ideas on how to do it, just need to figure out which one will be the best option.

Well, I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving, we hope that our Colorado family makes it home save and sound, back to the cold north. We’ll eat some whataburgers and Patos for you

Well, I’ll be leaving in a bit to take Laura to the airport, and then I’ll be missing her for 6 days, but she’ll be back. I hope! Weather is nice in Cali…

The root canal went pretty well I think. Thanks to everyone for the prayers. I was in the room around 9, and out by about 10. It was a pre-molar tooth, so there was only one root to contend with. Afterwards I came hope and relaxed a bit, grabbed a quick nap, mainly because I was really tense during the procedure and need to wind down. After I take Laura to the airport, I’ll be headed back to work for the rest of the day.

Well, I already know today is not going to be a good day, but I’ll survive

9:00 I am scheduled for my first ever root canal . But, it’s time I get my teeth fixed up and this will actually be the 2nd step. About 1-2 months ago, I had to have another 2 extractions, since the teeth were not worth keeping, and also got a “deep cleaning” or root scaling. That was not fun. Hopefully the root canal won’t be as bad. I’ll have it crowned probably after the first of the year.

Also today Laura is flying out for San Diego for some sort of Communications conference. She’ll be back on Tuesday of next week, then on Thursday morning early, we’ll be driving up to Austin to spend Thanksgiving with my parents and the Denver crew. We are definitely looking forward to that.

Today I will forgo my rants and ravs, my delirious babble and send you to the truth.

You cannot be a Christian and vote for Obama

I don’t recall the exact date, or even the year. But about 7-9 years ago, Laura, me and the kids went down to Brownsville for the air show down there. It was during the fall months, as we were not sure if they were going to actually have the show because there was a strong cold front forecast to arrive that day. We got to tour the hangers, watch a few planes fly around. But the main event was a flyby by a Stealth Bomber. As the event went on, they were not sure how much longer the event would last and if the bomber would make it. It was flying in from the Corpus base I believe. The low dark clouds started moving in, and it looked very dismal. Those of you that have lived down here know what it looks like when strong fronts come in.

Over the PA, they kept announcing that the Bomber was in route, it did leave it’s base and would attempt a flyby, hopefully before the rains started and there was still some visibility. The weather started getting worse, so we all made our way to the parking lot, to our car. The PA announcements started getting faint, but I could hear they it was close, all of us looking around the sky to see if we could see it.

Then, out of the dark clouds, this HUGE BAT flew down, roaring like giant. Slowly flying over us, ground shaking, people pointing and hollaring. It was the most amazing sight I have ever seen. I was extremely impressed and extremely proud of our country. In awe at our accomplishments. It’s a sight and memory that I will never forget.

This morning I happened upon a video of another flyby, not near as impressive as what we saw, but impressive none the less. Enjoy, although I wish everyone could have experienced what we experienced that afternoon.

Argh… Sunday morning I was in a great mood, till I got to the church, did some sound checks, and noticed most of our stage equipment had been tampered with. Levels on the monitors had been messed with and the monitor mixer board had been messed with. So I went about getting things reset to best guess levels as fast as possible before practice started. During practice I had a few issues with feedback on the monitors, but worked them out fairly quick and thought I had it all under control.

At this point, I was still in a fairly good mood, enjoying Sunday School and then the worship service. (well… enjoying might be too much of a word, During the worship service I am usually a wreck, nervous, fidgeting with the main board, trying to make sure everything sounds good, make sure it’s not to loud, or too soft, etc.)….

Worship goes on, we are on the 4th or 5th song I think, then BAAMMM!! Huge low frequency feedback emitting from the stage. Panic city!! Gladly the worship team just kept going, no hiccups, no one stopped singing, just kept going. I will frantically dropping microphones from the mix one by one, trying to clear the problem, to no avail. I happened to look up and see Nathan (the pianist) missing with his piano, so I killed his monitor and that cleared the feedback. He kept his piano off and the 7 singers, along with a flute and bass guitar finished the song. It was actually really pretty sounding. After the song was over, I lowered levels on the piano monitor, and gave him the ok to turn things back on again, and the service went on.

I happily kept my cool, and last night during worship practice, my assistant and I completely re-set the monitor board from scratch. So we should be ok now. We figured out that possibly some kids from the spanish church that meets there on Tuesdays and Saturdays had probably been missing with the knobs and got things messed up. So, I had a little discussion with our pastor, politely stating that no kids should be allowed on stage for any service (unless of course it’s planned that way) and to assert to both congregations that no-one should be touching the equipment. And I think that with the real life experience that our church just had, they now understand why I don’t want anyone touching the AV equipment.