Good Day

Hello all,

It is a good day at DST. I had another small change promoted to production today. Each one of the changes makes me more comfortable with the process and more efficient overall.

Tonight we had a taco's for dinner and then Ali and I had another lesson in riding her bike. She is getting better, but needs to trust herself and her balance. Once she does that, she will have it made.

Good night,

-Andy

Listening

Hello all,

Jennifer and I have been attending a small group at Good Shepherd called

Thirty Days to Live

It is a challenge to live the next 30 days as if they were the last on this Earth. I've pondered a lot over this challenge and must say I started this back in May when I quit my position at Embarq. I was not happy there anymore and felt like my career had stagnated. I was not happy at work and that spilled over to my home. Once that was corrected, things seemed to work themselves out again. I still have a long way to go. I have apologies to make and forgiveness to seek. I need to let go of the past in some cases and embrace where I am right now.

Good night,

-Andy

Chiefs Win

Hello all,

Last night the Nebraska Cornhuskers lost to Virginia Tech at home. It was a good game and the program is taking a step in the right direction. To my surprise the Chiefs won this afternoon when they played the Denver Broncos. Who would have predicted that one?

-Andy

Saturday Football

Hello all,

I love Saturday afternoon football. I do not sit in front of the TV all afternoon. I have the game on while working on other projects and listen for big plays and then rewind the TV and watch it again. Tonight the Huskers play Virginia Tech in Lincoln. It should be a good game.

-Andy

Mowing Yard

Hello all,

It seems that all I do anymore is mow the yard. I know that I have a busy weekend coming up so I took tonight as an opportunity to mow the yard tonight. It took a little over an hour to mow and get it the mower put away. After I finished, it was time to come in and get cleaned up for the night. I think the new grass seed is coming in nicely. I can't wait to see what it looks like in a month or so.

-Andy

First Win at DST

Hello all,

Today was a very good day for me at DST. I owe it to Steve Brown for making me learn regular expressions 10 years ago. Today my team was presented with this problem: How to identify multiple spaces in a line an outside source and get it to be formatted in a standard format. The original technique used multiple if/then/else scenarios and then looping through each line to insure its format. I was overheard the discussion next to me and offered the suggestion of using a regular expression to identify the pattern of more than one space between words and then replace all subsequent spaces with nothing. After two minutes of tweaking the javascript, it was working and it works fast! The page originally loaded in ten seconds. It now loads without delay. Thank you Mr. Brown. I finally have a feather in my hat at DST.

Here is the line:

s/\s{2.}\ \g

This is read:

Substitute white space of two or more to infinity with a single space globally on the line.

-Andy

Working on the ABC's

Hello all,

Tonight Zac and I worked on writing his letters again. He is having trouble with the lower case "d" vs. "b". I know this is normal, but we worked on it for a while tonight. We then worked on the capital "R". It was soon time for bath time and bed.

Good-night,

-Andy

Mowing the yard

Hello all,

I wish I had something more glamorous to tell you about, but I don't really. When I came home tonight I made pancakes for dinner and then headed out to the yard to mow until dark. I finished with the last minutes of twilight. I wish I had lights on the mower, but then my neighbors would all be laughing at me for sure.

After mowing the yard I worked with Zac on his spelling and letter sound recognition. He would ask me to help him spell a word and then I would say the letter sound. From the sound, he would write the letter. Zac has trouble with the letter "S". When making the letter, he starts it out like a letter "2" and then tries to correct it in the middle of it. He is making improvements every day. I am very proud of him. Did I tell you that Zac is recognizing some words? He knows the words "the", "and", "or", "he" and "she". Jennifer and I are very proud.

Good-night,

-Andy

Ryder Cup Win

Hello all,

What a great day to watch a golf match. The sun was shining brightly. The temperature was in the low 80's and the Americans beat the European team in the Ryder Cup.

Great Job USA!!!

-Andy

Mom in town

Hello all,

This weekend my mother was in town. She drove down last night and we had an enjoyable evening at home with the kids. Ali read to Nana on the couch while I read Zac's library book to him in the chair. Ali almost read Nana to sleep a few times. It is a good thing that Ali made sure Nana was listening to the story!

Good night,

-Andy

Watering the yard

Hello all,

It is that time of year where I drag hoses across the yard in an effort to get the yard ready for the Winter and eventual Spring. I'm very pleased in the progress of the yard. Maybe next year I can have a sprinkler system installed so I can forgo this process. I'll keep you posted as the years go by.

-Andy

Dinner at Diane's

Hello all,

Tonight we went over to Diane's house for dinner. It was nice to sit down and have dinner as a family with Diane. Zac had a nice prayer. Now all we need to do is get him to speak up a little bit. He needs to remember that we can't hear his whispers. I love you Bud. I know you will get more confident.

-Andy

Gymnastics

Hello all,

You just never know what you are going to get when you go to gymnastics with the kids. Tonight I ran into two classmates from Northwest Missouri State University. Melinda walked up to me and said "I know you from somewhere... Did you go to Northwest?" I replied yes and then the quiz was on to find out what class we had in common. It turned out that we had many classes together in the Computer Science department. She used wear glasses and now had contacts. Of course, things change in ten plus years, but for the most part she looked as I remembered her.

The second person I ran into is Emily. She was there from 1996-1999 and worked at A&G with Jennifer and me at the Library. I knew that I had seen her before, but could not place her until she started to tell me where she went to school. Good old Marvyille... Emily lived in Hudson... but never came over to the Delta Sig house. She must have been one of the only girls not to walk across the parking lot to our fraternity house.

Good to see you again Melinda and Emily

Making Progress

Hello all,

Today I worked on deploying the Vision system in Weblogic 10 to three different environments on my workstation. I'm the test subject for my team. When I get all of the kinks worked out of the system, then I'm to show the rest of the guys how to do it.

-Andy

Winter Clothes

Hello all,

Tonight I washed and put away two more loads of winter clothes. This is the one thing I do not like about the change of seasons. It is a real bear to get through all of the laundry.

-Andy

Chiefs Loss

Hello all,

Boy the Chiefs looked horrible today. Maybe they will lose 12 games this year again. I don't know, but it is very painful to watch them struggle.

-Andy

Men's Group

Hello all,

Today I attended my first Men's Group at Good Shepherd UMC. It is a simple group really. All you need to be is a guy who attends Good Shepherd. We ate breakfast together and Jim talked about the story of Joseph and how his brothers did not like him very much and sold him into slavery. It was a good discussion and everyone participated. After the lesson, we helped fill backpacks with food for the outreach program. I greatly enjoyed myself this morning and am looking forward to many more gatherings.

Andy

CSS Training

Hello all,

I was in CSS training today. The class was taught at a level that assumed some level of understanding about HTML and what styles were so that made it more interesting. I must be honest, I did learn a few tricks which made it worth attending. After class I went home and started to make dinner when the civil alert sirens went off. There were a line of thunderstorms that were coming through our area. The hurricane Ike that hit Texas had created a great disturbance in the atmosphere and it was making life interesting for everyone in the Midwest. The good news is nothing happened near us and life was back to normal before long.

Good night,

-Andy

Day of Remembrance

Hello all,

Tonight my daughter came home and talked about what happened on 9/11/01. She was not even a year old when it happened, but she wanted to talk about it since they covered it in school today. How do you tell your child that the people who did this were not good men? How do you talk about it without scaring her into thinking everyone is a bad person?

Good night,

-Andy

Day 2 of HTML

Hello all,

Another day of breezing through a class on a subject I am very familiar. I finished my final class project in 20 minutes today and then completed my exam in another 10. After that I was free to go home and mow the yard at 4:00. It was nice to get out of class early and wrap up some chores before the rain comes in this weekend.

-Andy

HTML Training

Hello all,

Today was a VERY boring day. I was sent to a training class on HTML. I've been using HTML now for over nine years and knew most of the material they covered in class. I even helped some of my classmates as they day went on. I get to come back tomorrow to finish up the class. YIPPEE...

-Andy

Start of week four

Hello all,

I am starting my fourth week of working at DST. I can't believe it has been a month! Time sure does go quickly. I'm enjoying my position and learning a lot. I've started to receive more tickets to work on so that is a good sign.

-Andy

Chiefs Lose

Hello all,

It was a good effort, but not enough to make it into the win column for the Chiefs. At least the game was close and entertaining against the Patriots. We had Vanna, Diane and Marcy and Dave over to watch the game. It was good to have them all over.

After the game, I should have mowed the yard, but did not. It was a combination of not being motivated and not enough light left in the day. Maybe I'll get to it Monday night.

-Andy

Huskers Win

Hello all,

THE MIGHTY MIGHTY HUSKERS have won their 2nd game of the football season. Big Red Nation is proud...

Ok, enough of that. I know the game was not against the best opponent, but a win is a win in my book. This afternoon Zac and I played outside for a while before the rain started to come down. The yard will need to be mowed before too much longer. Maybe I'll get to it tomorrow.

-Andy

FRIDAY

Hello all,

It is finally FRIDAY. I've had a good week at work and am looking forward to two days off without thinking about the financial world for a change. Today was a long day for sure. I'm making progress learning how things in Vision work, but the learning curve is very steep. I'm hoping they are as patient with me as Steve was when I first started with SODS.

-Andy

PTA Meeting

Hello all,

Tonight we all went to Oak Wood Manor for a PTA meeting. There were a lot of people there for a change! There must have been over 100 parents that atteneded. We had to set up more tables and chairs to provide space for everyone to have a seat. After the meeting, I stayed behind to assist in the clean-up while Jennifer took the kids back to the house. When I arrived at home I was pleased to find the kids were already in the pajamas. It was soon time for bed.

Peace and Quiet...

Later, Jennifer and I did our paperwork for our passports. We are planning on going to Mexico next summer to celebrate our 10 1/2 year anniversary. I'll keep you posted as that dream gets a little bit closer!

Good night,

-Andy

Rain...

Hello all,

The remains of hurricane Gustav is hovering over Kansas City today and with it: rain. Don't get me wrong, I love the rain. We definitely need the moisture. It was cool and the kids went to school in blue jeans today. Ali was a little confused on the reason she could not wear her normal shorts. She figured it out shortly though.

This prompted me to run out and get the kids four pairs of jeans for each of them. Last Spring's jeans are getting a little short now. They are in 7's and 8's now. They grow so fast!

Good night,

-Andy

Code Review...

Hello all,

Let me tell you sitting on a phone for three hours without a headset is not easy. Today I attended my fourth code review that lasted three hours on the phone. Wow. What a grind. I hear that our team is getting to test out headsets to aid our efforts. I can't wait.

-Andy

Labor Day

Hello all,

Happy Labor Day! The day started with watching two movies at the house with Jennifer and Vanna. The girls watched Step It Up 2 and then I watched Vantage Point. Both were good movies for their audience. The dancing movie had great choreography, but the story line was a little weak. Vantage Point was great! I was guessing the whole time.

After the movies, we went over to Diane's house for a cookout. I grilled burgers on her grill Jen and her mom fixed the rest of the dishes inside. It was a great meal and everyone ate more then they should have.

-Andy