Merry Christmas

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Merry Christmas to Everyone!

Thankfully Melissa and I are feeling much better today, still don’t think I am at 100% but I am doing a lot better than I was the other day. Kylie had a good morning with Mommy and showed me all the nice things she got, like her new Barbie house and her many new books. When we came back to Daddy’s house she got to open even more presents! She was real happy with her new Leapster 2 and all the new Littlest Pet Shop toys she got. She got lots of new clothes at both Mommy and Daddy’s house as well, and I know she is happy with her new wardrobe. She even got a new Disney Princess Scooter Disney Princess Scooterlike the one in the picture, but Daddy will need to put that together first. She was real happy when she opened that one up because as she said “I always wanted a scooter!”

I am very happy to say that dinner turned out really good! The ham was very flavorful and tender, and the sweet potatoes were baked and mashed to perfection. Melissa’s pumpkin pie turned out excellent and was the perfect dessert to finish off a very good dinner.

After dinner Kylie wanted to play with here new Littlest Pet Shop Cozy Care Adoption Center, and let me say, getting all the pieces out of the box was a lot more difficult than it should have been! In addition she got a number of new Littlest Pets to go along with what she already had, Daddy didn’t realize how many that was. It was fun watching her play and enjoy her new toys!

I think this turned out to be a great Christmas Day! Now though it is time for bed, we’ll leave the cleaning and de-decorating for another day!

Perfect Timing

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This is shaping up to have the potential to be a very miserable Christmas. As of last night I have a pretty bad case of some type of flu. I haven’t been this sick in a very long time. I even had to have Tiffany come and get Kylie I am so sick. So not only am I feeling like crap, but I also miss out on time with Kylie. 🙁 I really hope Kylie doesn’t end up catching whatever I have. On top of that I think Melissa has it too. I can’t be certain, but I suspect I caught something when I went to Bronner’s earlier this week. I just hope I get better before Christmas so I can spend a nice day with Kylie and Melissa (she has to work this year, so she isn’t going back to her parents house), I even planned to make a nice dinner; ham, sweet potatoes, corn, cranberry sauce, and Melissa was going to make a pumpkin pie. -sigh- I really hope I get better soon.

Posted in Ed

A Day at Bronner’s

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In a rare occurrence Melissa and I both had the day off today, so we decided to take a trip up to Frankenmuth to go to Bronner’s. Neither of us had been up there in quite a while, so we decided that seeing as we had nothing else planned, and an entire day available, that we would take the ride up and look around. We picked up a few new Christmas ornaments (big surprise considering they are the worlds largest Christmas store) but mainly just walked around the store for over three hours, and still didn’t see everything. After we were done there we actually drove down into Frankenmuth to see the town, I think I would like to go back up there in the early fall to see the leaves change and actually walk around. Afterward we went to Tony’s Restaurant off I-75 in Birch Run, the food is delicious, the portions are huge, the service is great, and the atmosphere is fun. We had a very nice day, and it was even nicer because we actually got to go out and do something rather than just sit at home.

Hitch Cover

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I like that I am buying this truck because now I feel like I am allowed to do things to personalize it without feeling like it’s pointless. Case in point, today I bought a cover for my trailer hitch that also acts as an additional brake light. The best part about it is that it is a Skull! Here are a couple of pictures of it, the dark one was taken with my cell phone so the quality is low, but you get the idea of what it looks like when it is lit up. You can also see the locking hitch pin I bought to ensure someone can’t simply walk off with whatever I have attached to the hitch.

Missed Weigh In

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I realized about 20 minutes ago that I forgot to weigh in this morning, so I guess I will have to wait until next week to see how I am doing. Here’s hoping for good results next week.

This is a Good Sign

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This seems to be going well; I weighed in at 288.8 this morning which is a drop of 1.4 lbs. I am sure it is due to all the walking I did while out in Philadelphia, which is just more of an indication that I need to find ways to be (more) active.It’s not even the being active that’s the problem, it’s finding the time and motivation that is the hardest part for me. -sigh-

That’s Annoying

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So the DR failed… The part that bothers me the most is we are not sure why. For some reason we were not seeing the restore speeds that we expected. Building the TSM server was easy, and is almost becoming routine. I had all the tapes in the library before the system was ready, once the system was properly configured and handed over to me I had TSM rebuilt and up and running in under four hours. I had a few issues that I quickly troubleshot and got resolved, but we still didn’t stream from the tapes as fast as we have in the past. At one point I realized the restore wasn’t streaming from multiple sessions; after i fixed that we got some increase in restore speed, but nothing like we expected. I know the nature of this data (millions of small files) tends to cause slow backups and restores, but we have seen much better speeds in the past. I know i will be pondering this for some time to come.

Missed Weigh In

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Missed weigh in this morning due to being at DR in Philadelphia. Though I have been doing a lot of walking the last few days, and will continue to do more for the next few days (it’s a good distance from the hotel to the DR site), I think I am going to write this week off and start back up next Sunday. On a side note it turns out I was wrong, the test ends at 8am on Monday not sure why I thought it ended so much later.

A Lost Weekend

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Out in Philadelphia for another DR test, the only downside is that I am going to lose a weekend for this one, but at least Melissa was able to come out with me. She’s never seen Philadelphia so today I showed her around the historic district (Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, etc) but for the next few days she will be on her own. I’m not worried about the test, it shouldn’t be an issue, just time consuming. Today was a good day, though I am real sore from all the walking, not to use to that anymore. Tomorrow the test starts at 8am and goes through Monday at four. Sometimes I think these are a waste of time as many think they are not a true DR test, but that is a discussion for another time; now it is time for bed, need to be rested for the morning.

Posted in Ed

It’s Here, It’s Here!

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The new bed is here! Nothing like coming home from work and finding a brand new bed all set up in my bedroom just waiting for me! Gardner White delivered our new bed today, and thankfully Melissa had the day off so she could stay home to accept the delivery. They took down the old bed and took it away (except the frame) and put up the new bed in its place. I didn’t realize just how big this bed was going to be nor how high; i can sit on the edge and my feet don’t touch the floor! I can’t wait to go to bed tonight! I really hope this bed helps my back.

[Update 12/01/2009]
Oh man, that was a great night sleep. After laying in bed for a few minutes last night and allowing the new pillow top to conform to my lower back and support it properly, my back pain went away. This morning was the first one in a very long time that I woke up without back pain! I really hope this continues!