Category Archives: Uncategorized

Yesterday we had a nice Mother’s day. Started with a trip down the Blue Ridge Parkway to see Smart View, a picnic area with a 2.6 mile trail. The trail loops around the picnic area in some nice woods. It was nice getting out there with Kathryn and Iris. Iris was in her backpack and seemed to enjoy the hike despite missing her morning nap. The weather was great. When we got back we were paranoid about ticks and sure enough, I found 3 of them crawling on me — 2 on a sock and one on my shirt. Thankfully Iris and Kathryn had no ticks on them.

Afterwards we went to the Rocky Knob picnic area to meet up with Kathryn’s grandmother and her Aunt Bo. They brought along Minnie, as well. We also met up with Duke and Margaret plus the kids. Everyone got a kick out of Iris. Katie practically worships Iris. Dylan really likes her too. They both got a kick out of keeping Iris occupied. Marie brought some interesting stuff for show-and-tell: a plaque that one of Ted’s congregation members dedicated to him, an antique tape measure used during the building of their house, and an old corn husking tool about the same age as the tape measure.

It was a great picnic; good to get out of the daily drudgery. We packed up when we felt some drops come down around 3PM; by the time we loaded up the car, it was pouring rain. People were fleeing the picnic area.

It was the first time we took the Parkway all the way up there — usually we go down 221 and then get on route 8 in Floyd. The Parkway was much more scenic.

For some reason I feel like I need to recount the number of ways a co-worker of mine tried to track me down while I was sitting at my desk. It’s been over a month or so — lemme see if I get it right.

I was sitting at my desk, working, trying to focus and not be boggled by tons of emails, calls, IMs, etc. The task at hand: get a piece of our software product up and running. My phone rings – I can see that it is a call from the Springfield office. I figure, “this can wait.” I know who’s calling. I’ll call back later.

In the span of roughly 5 mere minutes, this person tries to contact me the following ways:

– via an email message from him
– via an instant message from him
– through our office administrative assistant, who comes to my door and asks, “Should I just tell him you’ll call him back”?
– through the project manager at the customer site, who leaves me a voice message AND sends me an email
– through a fellow worker, who comes to my office and says “he instant messaged me to ask if you were around.”
– through ANOTHER fellow worker, who comes to my office and says “he instant messaged me to ask if you were around.”

To top it off? The reason he was trying to get in touch with me was to ask if I was working on what I had already been working on at the time of the first contact attempt: getting that piece of our software product up and running. It was both infuriating and extremely funny.

—

A quick quote from a former employee: “My son says he wants to inject parasites into Satan’s testicles.”

—

One of the best typos in a company email EVER:

Instead of:

“Sorry about the inconvenience.”

We got:

“Sorry about the incontinence.”

One of the convenient features of our local library here in Roanoke is its web page, where you can search the card catalog for the book you want. Another feature is the ability to renew books online. Kathryn logged into their web page tonight to try this out. She obtained her library card very recently, so we haven’t built up much history with them yet. One of the first items we checked out was the DVD “Capturing the Friedmans”, an acclaimed documentary about the destruction of an upper middle class Jewish family by the father and one of sons being accused of many counts of child molestation.

So, Amazon.com-style, the library web page tries to be clever and comes up with a list of “Kathryn’s favorite subjects.” At the very top of the list is “Children in pornography.”

Great; now we’re probably in a database somewhere.

I love it when computers do our thinking for us!

An interesting technique — slip your spam message in between two slices of literary quotes like some kind of bizarre spam sandwich (yes, it’s a stretch):

“From: Rosendo Roberts [NTFHX@yahoo.com]
Subject: Start the new year with healthy savings on meds xIa17fC8cF

And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave .And lend to the rhyme of the poet .Of all my boyish dreams. . Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank, .And the beauty and mystery of the ships, .I can see the shadowy lines of its trees, . Choicerxvalue is your online pharmacy for FDA USA approved drugs through online consultation, specializing in the EXTREMELY POPULAR, yet hard to find High Level Muscle Relaxers, Pain Relief, and prescription Sleeping Aid Meds such as SOMA, Fioricet, Ambien, Cyclobenzaprine, Flexoril , and MORE Get Your Meds Here and Start Saving! parablerxweb.com O’er the arms and back of my chair; .The skipper he stood beside the helm, .And bring a pallor into the cheek, . Is haunting my memory still: .The drum-beat repeated o’er and o’er, .Yes, forever and a day, . ”

The huge context-switch in there cracked me up.

Perhaps we can find similar literary inspiration once we start ordering and taking some of those meds!

Yesterday, we discovered the hard way that Iris apparently has a peanut allergy. The timing was great, too, because this happened during Jon and Kate’s baby shower which was held at the office.

We were finishing off the meal with a nice slice of peanut butter pie and without thinking, we gave Iris two small bites of it using a spoon. Over the course of a few minutes, Kathryn began noticing red marks developing on Iris’ face. After nursing Iris, Kathryn returned to the conference room where we were having the shower and we both noticed flareups of red splotches and bumps, mostly around Iris’ eyes and ears. Her upper lip to one side was puffed up a small amount. So, we went to my office, called the pediatrician’s office, and they told us to visit the emergency room. We then told everyone at the shower what was happening and left. I couldn’t help thinking that we were stealing some attention away from Kate and Jon.

Before hauling ass to Community Hospital, we gave Iris a dose of Benadryl. While cursing the many red lights on 460, we noticed that she wasn’t getting any worse so we calmed down a bit. We were worried about her breathing — fortunately the reaction was not that bad. By the time we got to the hospital, Iris looked pretty good. The nurses checked her out, and the doctor wrote us a script “H2”, a histamine blocker (similar to the drug in Tagamet).

She had eaten some other food (a bit of cantaloupe and honeydew) in addition to the pie, but it seemed likely the peanuts in the pie caused the problem.

Today we took Iris to our pediatrician’s office and saw Dr. Cunkle, who wrote us a script for some epinephrine shots (“epi-pens”) for use in emergencies. He recommended against the skin test, where an assortment of allergens is applied to the skin and observed. His reasoning included the possibility of false negative results, and that Iris might have a bad reaction to the test. He was also hopeful about her growing out of this food sensitivity; he referenced a study that showed some number of children that grew out the peanut allergies they had earlier on in life. Here’s hoping!

Meanwhile, so begins the quest to avoid all things peanut.

I took Test 2 for the Real-time Systems course this morning. I think it went well. I stumbled a bit over the first 2 or 3 problems but then recovered towards the end of the 75 minutes given. I guess this is typical – the more pressure, the more results.

The class has been difficult but I’m glad I’m taking it — it’s forcing me to dust off old academic parts of my brain that I shut off years ago. Walking around the Virginia Western Community College campus (where I take the exams; the course itself is based in University of Massachusetts) made me nostalgic for my college days at Virginia Tech – but then I remembered the $40 that VT’s parking services pilfered from us when we parked in a completely empty parking lot for a mere hour to walk around campus with Iris.

(first attempt to back-date into blogger from old livejournal entry)

Yesterday, we discovered the hard way that Iris apparently has a peanut allergy. The timing was great, too, because this happened during Jon and Kate’s baby shower which was held at the office.

We were finishing off the meal with a nice slice of peanut butter pie and without thinking, we gave Iris two small bites of it using a spoon. Over the course of a few minutes, Kathryn began noticing red marks developing on Iris’ face. After nursing Iris, Kathryn returned to the conference room where we were having the shower and we both noticed flareups of red splotches and bumps, mostly around Iris’ eyes and ears. Her upper lip to one side was puffed up a small amount. So, we went to my office, called the pediatrician’s office, and they told us to visit the emergency room. We then told everyone at the shower what was happening and left. I couldn’t help thinking that we were stealing some attention away from Kate and Jon.

Before hauling ass to Community Hospital, we gave Iris a dose of Benadryl. While cursing the many red lights on 460, we noticed that she wasn’t getting any worse so we calmed down a bit. We were worried about her breathing — fortunately the reaction was not that bad. By the time we got to the hospital, Iris looked pretty good. The nurses checked her out, and the doctor wrote us a script “H2”, a histamine blocker (similar to the drug in Tagamet).

She had eaten some other food (a bit of cantaloupe and honeydew) in addition to the pie, but it seemed likely the peanuts in the pie caused the problem.

Today we took Iris to our pediatrician’s office and saw Dr. Cunkle, who wrote us a script for some epinephrine shots (“epi-pens”) for use in emergencies. He recommended against the skin test, where an assortment of allergens is applied to the skin and observed. His reasoning included the possibility of false negative results, and that Iris might have a bad reaction to the test. He was also hopeful about her growing out of this food sensitivity; he referenced a study that showed some number of children that grew out the peanut allergies they had earlier on in life. Here’s hoping!

Meanwhile, so begins the quest to avoid all things peanut.

Sometimes spam subjects are funny enough to be worth the hassle of deleting the emails:

“Now you can have her cozen batwing”

Spammers try to confuse the ever-increasing sophistication of spam filters by adding random phrases and sentences to their annoying emails. These sentences are occasionally funny:

“The demise of my hamster made me cry. The demise of my hamster made me cry. Laura was apprehensive when I told her Bob Dole loved her. The demise of my hamster made me cry.”

One of the latest tricks I’ve seen is for spammers to include obscure quotations (biblical and otherwise) as the first paragraph of the spam. So before reading about some awesome offer for cheap V14GR4, you at least get to enjoy a pithy chunk of wisdom before abandoning such paths to enlightenment in favor of enlarging your “Purple-helmeted yogurt-thrower” (actual spam quote).

“So huge it drags!”

If we can’t fight it, might as well enjoy it.