Baba Wawa

On Thursday, one of my girlfriends and I went to see Barbara Walters at Alverno College. It was very interesting.

Barbara is out on tour promoting her new book, Audition. I have not started to read it yet, but it looks interesting. I think that some of the historical parts will be really good. You never know how that will help us in trivia nites.




We were told up front that we were not allowed to take pictures but I did manage to get a few of them before the guy yelled at us. The lighting in the auditorium was a goofy so the pictures I did get are a bit fuzzy and off. The evening was set up to be in an interview style and Kathy Mykleby from WISN was hosting it. I liked the format.

Some interesting facts are that she does not drive and never has. She considered one of her major coups to be when she had to get on a plane with Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor to get an interview with Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin. Her older sister was mentally retarded and Barbara was in Milwaukee giving a speech when she learned that she died.

If you would liketo see some of the interview, click here.

I Should Know Better

...than to put away my winter coat until August. I kid you not. On Sunday morning, I put my winter coat away in the closet from it's spot on the coat hook in the hallway. With it, I packed away my gloves and hat.

I woke up this morning to take the dogs out and it was 38 degrees out. I had to go back in the closet and get my coat. WTF?? This is crazy.

The temps dropped yesterday about 8:30 or so. It went from about 80 to 54 in about an hour or so. The wind picked up and brought in the cold blustery weather again.

I am glad that I spent yesterday taking off the rest of the storm windows and washing the windows up. It feels nice to be able to see out of the clean windows. Makes the rooms so much brighter. Except for the fact that three of the windows are garbage and have some sort of leak in them and are now all fogged up. One still has water in between the two panes of glass. I will have to replace those before winter.

ZOBMONDO!!

Would you rather....

After three days without eating, have a sumptuous Thanksgiving meal placed in front of you and win $5,000 by waiting 16 hours to eat it

----OR----

just dig in?

I would take the five grand. I really do not like most of the traditional Thanksgiving fare type of food. Do not care for turkey all that much, hate mashed potatoes, I will eat stuffing (usually the only thing I eat on Thanksgiving, other than the olives and pickles) and that is about it.

Peace out!

A New Look

I have been looking for a new template to use for my blog. There was nothing wrong with the old one but it was time for a change.

What do you guys think of it?? Love it?? Hate it??

Let me know what you think.

Busy as a Bee

Another busy weekend. Thank goodness I have Monday to rest up.

Saturday, Hubby and I took my niece to the museum to see the Body Worlds exhibit. It was really cool. What was odd that I did not expect is that most of the bodies still had eyelashes and eyebrows. Some even had pubic hair. Really bizarre. The pregnant woman with an 8 month old fetus still in the womb was very cool. She had an incurable disease and knew that her and the baby would not survive. I wish that it would have been less crowded and you could have taken pictures. Looking at the lungs of a smoker is enough to make you stop. Also, seeing what cancer looks like is weird. If you have the chance to go see, I would. It was worth the money spent.

After that we made a top at the planetarium. We seen CSI:Cosmic. That was cool. I really enjoyed the first part where we got to see the skies over Milwaukee and she pointed out the stars that were visible and when.

Next stop was Discovery World at Pier Wisconsin. It was just ok. Not worth the price if you paid full price. The aquarium was neat. We got to pet stingrays.

Had dinner at Elsa's. I love their Pork variation #1 sandwich. Yummy!!!

Today was spent doing yard work. I got the grass cut and my dad came over and helped me power wash the house. We decided to take off one of the storm windows and see what they looked like underneath. Surprisingly, not bad. My project for tomorrow maybe to take the rest of the storm windows off the house.

We grilled out a couple of steaks on the grill. They were yummy as well.

I watched "Letters from Iwo Jima" this evening. It was good. The subtitle thing made me actually watch the movie instead of reading and watching or something else. You had to pay attention. I would recommend it along with "Flag of our Fathers". Same basic story but told from different sides of the war.

I had to work earlier for about an hour but it went smooth. Thank goodness.

Well, it is almost time for bed. My butt is dragging.

Have a good Memorial day all!!

Phone Home... Maybe....

I swear the the phone company is a joke. When I moved I thought that I had requested the same service for my new house that I had at my old house. The bill was always about 28 bucks or so. We didn't have anything except for call waiting. I never seen the need to have Caller ID or anything else... I never used it.

I got May's phone bill today and once again, Hubby's name is STILL on it. I have called every month and get the same thing from them.. Ok, we have taken care of it. You are the only one on the bill. Until I get the bill the next month. He is still listed.

Then there is the cost thing. My bill is still over $43 a month. I have called each month to get the long distance removed from my service. I use my cell if I need to make a long distance call. The first two months the bill $60.17 and $73.47.

I don't get it. What is so hard about this?? All I want is basic service. The cheapest you got.

I would so move to just cell phone if I A.) had better reception here. I live in a little valley and no one gets decent service. If I go 1 block either way. I am at full service. B.) There are times for work that I end up on long conference calls and don't want to burn thru all the minutes in one day. Example: For the server upgrade, I was on a call from about 7:30 pm-12:00 am and then again from about 2:30 am - 8:30 am.

Maybe I should consider moving to VoIP. Road Runner already provides my cable service, maybe just get them to do my phone. Does anyone else have VoIP? If so, do you like it? What is good? What is bad?

My boss's boss will be in town for the next two days. This should be interesting. Boss dropped the ball on another project last week that left us once again scrambling to get things in place the day before they go live. I think he will leave with a whole lot of things to think about concerning my boss.

Camping this past weekend was fun. The weather on Sat nite was sucky. It couldn't decide if it wanted to rain or not. Either way it was cold and windy and kinda miserable that nite. During the day we had a good time playing bocce ball.

I did find beer heaven tho' A new Woodman's store opened in Oak Creek a few months ago. They advertise the 'wall of beer'. They carry every beer made in Wisconsin. Let me tell you, that is alot of beer. I ended up buying some Point Nude Beach, Tyranena Three Beaches Honey Blonde and Leinie's Summer Shandy (one of my favorites). I encourage you to check it out.

The Idol finals are almost on. Have to go watch.

Peace Out.

Big Wood

This past weekend were spent ripping up the carpeting in the living room and hallway. There was nothing really wrong with it, just not want I wanted and Boomer liked to wiz on it.

It took my dad and I only three hours to get it all ripped out and the floor cleaned up. We both were pleasantly surprised at how good the floors underneath looked. Much better shape than the floor in my bedroom.

This is before we started.



We started in the hallway. Just to see what it looked like.



After we were all done. The dogs were not to sure about the slippery floors again. Poor Rufus can't get his footing to jump up on the couch. I have to bring the area rugs up from the basement.



Another angle. Looking down the hall toward the bedrooms.



The floors are a bit yellow/orangey but that is the old finish on them wood that has aged over the last 50 years. I am in no hurry to have them refinished as they look in good shape.

I only have the spare bedroom and my office left to do yet. My office will be a bitch as moving my desk is not easy feat. It weighs a ton.

My next project will be to replace the baseboards and quarter round. It just looks junky and all knicked up and such.

For Mrs Chako

I was going thru some old emails and found this. I know how much you love the Packers and Brett Favre. I hope you enjoy it :)

An Interesting Proposition

Last summer I stuck my resume out on Milwaukeejobs.com. I had a few consulting firms call and a couple of interviews. Nothing really panned out.

I have not touched my resume since I stuck it out there. In the past two weeks I have had three firms contact me expressing interest in me. At first, I was like, nah, not interested. But then I began to think about it. Why not. The interview experience will be good and who knows. I may find something that I like.

So tonight, I emailed them back saying that they could contact me and to get more information.

I like my job. I like what I do. I am very good at my job. I consistently get emails from customers giving me praise. I always forward them to my boss and her boss. I also print them out and include them in my review each year.

I hate my boss and the road blocks that she throws up. Example: Co-worker, F. Nice guy but the job is just not right for him. He is now designing some web pages. We had to write the content and he did no more than copy and paste it out there. No formatting, no proof writing. This took 3 freaking days. Not sure what else he was doing but OMG!! the pages still look like crap and we are supposed to publish them next week. He wanted L and I to write the FAQ's. He has been doing this job for over a year now and can't figure out what types of questions we get often and to put them out there. This may be a case where I just pull the docs away from him and do them myself. It would probably take no more than half a day to create the web pages and get them looking good.

Part of me says to just let him fall on his face cuz we can't keep enabling this type of behavior. Maybe my boss will get the picture and move him into another job. It just is not right for him. Part of me says, I will get this dumped on me anyway, get it and do it now instead of later when the deadlines are tight.

Not too much on the agenda for the weekend. I may rip up the carpet in the living room. I know I have red oak hardwood floors under the carpet. What I don't know is what they will look like. The fun will be in finding out.

I also have to make a trip to my old library. I can't get a new card in my new city until I pay off the $.70 fine I have at the old library. It will cost me more in gas than the fine. Oh well. I have a list of books that I want to read and paying off the fine is the only way I will get to read them.

ZOBMONDO!!

Would you rather....

Eat three earthworms

----OR----

wear a necklace made of them on your wedding day?

I have to go with the necklace. I ain't eating worms if they ain't in some tequila.

Peace Out!!

Who Needs Sleep??

Apparently, not me.

Server upgrade went smooth. We were messing around with some web pieces for awhile but things were good. We called it a success around midnight and I went to bed.

Then my pager goes off. At 12:40am. Things had slowed to a crawl and for whatever reason the server was restarting itself. WTF?? Get vendor on the phone. Do some looking and don't see anything in the log files. We think maybe this is a fluke and go back to bed about 2:30 am.

Pager goes off at 2:57 am. What is going on? I get up again and gather the troops. We are now getting everybody who was on earlier back in. People are pouring over files and digging deep to try an figure out what is going on. At about 5:00 am we decide that we have to back out. We can't go into a Monday running as we are. The DBA and sys admin guys are geniuses and determine that we only have to do a partial backout. We can stay on the same database cluster and just move back to the old application server cluster as that is what is throwing the errors and restarting. It takes about an hour to form the plan and begin execution. By about 6:30am we are back in business. We have our key areas doing some testing for us and all seems well. We hang out and monitor until about 7:15 am. We decide then that we will do a status check at 8:30am.

I try to lay down and get a nap but the dogs have other ideas. They want to go out and eat and such. By time I take care of them I figure I may as well stays up and get some work done.

At 8:30 am, everything is still going smooth. YEAH!! Music to my ears. I cancel my two afternoon meetings and go back to bed. And there I lay... wide awake. I am now running on so much adrenaline that I can't sleep. After about an hour of tossing I finally sleep.

The garbage people (2nd cousins to the Village people) wake me up around 2:00pm. The dogs were restless and needed to get up. So here I am. I figure that if I'm going to sleep decent tonight I need to get up now. I have a headache and can barely keep my eyes open. I am hoping that a shower will help.

Peace Out!!

Easy Come, Easy Go

Another weekend has flown by again.

I am now 'working' on our server upgrade. The dba and sys admins are now doing their part and I just sit and wait for now. My job starts when they get done. Regression testing is boring but a very important thing.

Friday was low key. Went to go see Street Kings. Not too bad. I like Keanu Reeves so that is always a plus.

Saturday was spent playing poker. I did pretty good. Finished 3rd in the first game and 2nd in the second game. These point really helped boost me back into the mix. We played a cash game after that and I finished third. Just outta the money but it was fun.



After that we played 'stove poker'. What is stove poker?? you ask. It is basically 5 card draw for a buck a hand. Since the poker table still had games going on the only other flat surface was in the kitchen on the stove. Since I went deep into the other games I only got to play a few hands of stove poker. I didn't win a hand until the final one that we did for 3 bucks a person. That was cool as it netted me 15 bucks. Notice my winning hand is the straight. I caught the 6-9 in my draw.



Today, I did yard work. After a call to dad and two trips to the hardware store got the lawn mower started and the grass cut. it didn't take me much more than 30-40 minutes. The lawn really looks nice. Now I just have to wait until all the dandelions are dead. I have to call the lawn service to have them come back out next week to spray again. I was going to get some pictures but forgot until it was too late.

Since my dad was already here and hubby was coming over to see the dogs, I figured I would throw some brats on the grill. They were yummy. Nothing like the first time you grill out of the season.

I was across the street talking to a neighbor and got the scoop on the guy who is doing her patio. I'm going to see what he will charge me to put it in. I want to get a place to put the furniture, grill and fire pit and not have to worry about the grass. Plus it is less to mow.

Well, it is almost time for me to start 'working'. I am working on creating a new template for my blog and what better way to do it than using work software.

Have a good week everyone.

ZOBMONDO!!

Would you rather....

Accidentally run over and kill your best friend's cat with your car

----OR----

be forced to eat a small poodle you've never met?

I have to go with the cat. No way could I eat a dog on purpose.

I'm a Survivor... Not!

Every season, I get into a Survivor pool. It is run by a friend of a friend. It costs $10 per person.

Every year, I get close but no cigar. This season I had James and Yau Man. Yau went out early but not before he found the immunity idol in the first show. That netted me $3.

Tonight, James ended up leaving for medical reasons. He had a bad cut on his finger. I was pissed. I was really hoping that he would do good for me this season. Another season down the drain.

I love the fact that they are blind siding everyone once the merge happened. Ozzie and Jason never seen it coming. They should have. It really is good playing. I think that it will be Amanda or Parvati that will win it. I like both of them in their first season.

Another good night in trivia. We got hosed by the final question. I do not remember the exact question so I can't post it but it was about A's favorite movie, The Wizard of Oz. We did well enough to score a 2nd place. I see that they added a few more places for trivia. I am happy to see Riverfront Pizzeria. I was there a couple of months ago, and it was good. We will have to try that place out sometime.

This weekend will be busy with poker once again. it has been 3 weeks since we last played. We are going to try to get in at least 2 games. I know Mark would like to make it 3 if possible. It is going to be hard to get everyone together once the weather gets nice.

Sunday nite will be spent working on the server upgrade for work. Ever since my boss was confronted about her behavior she has been really good. Our team meeting yesterday was so productive it was scary.

Rufus is feeling much better. He slept thru the night last nite. Which was good as I was tired. On Tuesday nite, I took Rufus and Boomer out about 2:45 am or so. As I walked out the door, there was a cop walking down the driveway from the back yard. Scared me, scared him and Boomer went ballistic. Neither him or i expected the other to be there at that time of the nite. With the two houses on one side of me vacant, they do a walk thru every so often. That makes me glad that they are so diligent.

ZOBMONDO!!

Would you rather....

After flirting with a cute store clerk, realize you had a slight string of snot stretching from your nose to your ear

----OR----

that after playing with your dog earlier, you had a tiny spot of poop on your cheek.

I'm going with the poop on the cheek. It may be mistaken for a freckle or mole. No mistaking snot.