Had a nice visit week with my granddaughter visiting us.

She is 8 now.

 Starting a new job! Kickoff meeting is today!

Yay!

Happy Fourth to everyone!

good news/bad news...

good news. Contacted by old friends in Scotland and Australia, but the bad news was to tell me
and old friend had passed away. :(

I was supposedly being retained until EOY 2017 at my current job, but Corporate mergers intervened and now I have only until E Q1, 2017. bummer, but  Hopefully I should find something soon.

Good news. I made chocolate fudge cupcakes on Sunday.
Bad news or gooder news. I'm taking them into work for my colleagues..  :)

Busy week. Long hours
Tuesday 2am-10pm on a long support call.
Started out as an unresponsive read-only filesystem and ended up
having to move production over to a newly built lab copy.
didn't get finished until 2pm Wednesday eventually.
The rest of this week I'm just tired - really - really tired..
I'm going to bed at 10:07pm tired!
Tomorrow is a lovely day.. :)

Bella redux

Bella has been gone over a year now. Marley is healing our hearts but
we won't forget miss bella

Enjoying working where I'm at.
The variety of work is enormous.

I received some sad news last week. the manager who hired me
succumbed to a long illness.  It's a little strange around here right now.

Getting ready for a long winter down here.
My appartment is warm enough, but there is considerable distance from where I
park to the road. I will need a really large shovel is we get a lot of snow.

New Marley Picture. "where is MY plate?. Oh nm, I'll steal some off of grandad's plate.."

Wow!  nearly a year since I posted anything here.
So much has happened,
I no longer work for HP(C)/(E) whatever.
I'm freelancing as a contractor in Southfield MI.
Had to get an appt. in Pontiac as the job requires me
to go to the office every/most days.
I like the work. It was a challenge at first, driving
busy streets to get to/from work and the work was
a little bit different from what I was used to, but it's still
Unix/Linux, so no BD.

Here's another Marley pic from last summer.

And here's another of Bella - good times!

We LOVE our chihuahua, even if we can't spell Chihuahua...  :)

Cutest picture yet of Marley.

He went to see Santa last Saturday. had a lot of fun, met several new dog and people
friends and got some treats.
The Picture didn't turn out so good because all the people were making noise and trying to
get his ears to perk up - they don't know him - it just confused him...

Here's the pic I took today in the car, while I was waiting for Binnie.
He was cold and crawled inside my jacket...

Wurking in IT is for the DOGS!

Marley listing to the Met Opera...
I don't think he's much of an Opera fan

The biggest chew stick ever!

Here's Marley with a 3-4' chew stick my wife got him...
awesome.
Just had TWO hernias repaired today. I must say that the process is slick nowadays.
I need to keep up with 'modern developments'. There's a lot of good old
fashioned knowlege that many kids today don't 'get', but that's no excuse for me
falling behind the times...  Plus ca change, la meme chose or something of that ilk.
anyway. GIANT CHECK STICK

A Guid New year to yin and a''

I had a bunch of 'healthcare account' $$ to use up before 2014.
I know that up to $500 will roll over now, but that won't happen until
3/31/2014, so I decided to use it all up before EOY.
My wife and I went to Riteaid last night and bought a bunch of stuff
that's eligible, First Aid Kits, Epsom Salt, non-prescription reading glasses,
'Diabetic' socks, but for some reason, Band Aids were not covered. :(
Still, we have enough to give almost everyone a First Aid kit.
Oh, and they didn't cover walking sticks - I guess you need a prescription for those.

Now over the counter medicine is not eligible. It's strange that you can't
get Band Aids and Triple Antibiotic cream.. Oh well.

Looking forward to new challenges in 2014. 
The account I work on is winding down so I'll be doing some more interesting
work I hope.
It's really doesn't matter to me, as long as I can develop a positive attitude to
what I do. I hate stuff that's obviously useless, like checking TZ dates in Unix
(Unix uses Universal Time - to the system date doesn't change).
Strangely, I can reconcile with ISO/ITIL so a certain extent - there's a reason
behind it all, e.g. Change control, make sure you have a written plan of what you
plan to do, have everyone agree on when it should happen, etc.. etc...

OTOH, filling out a standard template because someone didn't think to use a database
for formatting the data...  eueww.... idiots

Let it snow! Let is snow! ...urgle...

Different day, same white stuff.
Probably about 3-4 inches last night.
Shovelled driveway and MIL/FIL driveway...
Dang I'm getting tired of this Winter already.

Wife is in full Christmas freak out mode.. she does this every year.
She bundles everything to give everyone a Merry Christmas, but she
does it all herself and doesn't accept any help, or very little.
I'd prefer that Christmas was a 'family' effort, but my wife has never
felt like that.
She pushed herself too much.

We won't have 'Eldest' and family this year for Christmas (maybe New Year?)
So it'll just be me, wife, dog, son and girlfriend and maybe middle daughter,
baby, boyfriend, his kids visiting.
I think Ashley may move in with us in the New Year.

That's enough details for an open post!  (Thanks NSA).

Saw an item today that the NSA collects kids letters to Santa .. sad.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! (Clue the Music, Maestro!)

I've shovelled about 4-5 inches today so far..

Hard to tell how much has fallen because it's blowing all over the place.

The wind is coming from lake Huron, so now I know what the folks in Muskegan

feel like...

Oscoda MI

7 Day Forecast

Gaylord, MI

NWS Weather Forecast Office

This
Afternoon

Snow

High: 22 °F

Tonight

Snow
Likely

Low: 16 °F

Sunday

Snow
Likely

High: 25 °F

Sunday
Night

Chance
Snow

Low: 8 °F

Monday

Chance
Snow

High: 22 °F

Monday
Night

Chance
Snow

Low: 19 °F

Tuesday

Chance
Snow

High: 30 °F

Tuesday
Night

Chance
Snow

Low: 21 °F

Wednesday

Chance
Snow

High: 27 °F

Yo Quiero Micky D?

Marley at McDonalds tonight. Compare this with Bella at the same place 3-4 years ago... :)

The Frigid MidWest

It's a bad start to Winter and it's still techically Autumn/Fall until 12/21.
High temps in the high teens/low 20s and lows in the single digits, low teens
this week.  We got about 3-4 inches a few days ago, it rained the next night and melted it then
we got some more that froze.
The Au Sable river might very well freeze this week.

On a happier note, my son and his girlfriend have found an appartment
and my wife is putting together a 'starter kit' of items that they are going to need.
We will be able to empty some of the furniture in the garage and give it to them

Lindsey Violet is not handling her switch from breast feeding to formula well.
The doctor put her on a soy formula to ease the transition.

Marley found a new friend at my daughter's boyfriends house. He has 3 dogs, but the youngest
one and Marley really hit it off!...  We'll have to schedule 'play dates' for Mr. Marley with
Dukey (He's a Pit Bull). Marley seems to be the dominant one so far... reminds me of
'Legally Blonde 2'... :)

Today

Chance
Snow

High: 20 °F

Tonight

Mostly
Cloudy

Low: 8 °F

Thursday

Chance
Snow

High: 19 °F

Thursday
Night

Chance
Snow

Low: 10 °F

Friday

Chance
Snow

High: 21 °F

Friday
Night

Chance
Snow

Low: 14 °F

Saturday

Snow
Likely

High: 21 °F

Saturday
Night

Snow
Likely

Low: 17 °F

Sunday

Chance
Snow

High: 22 °F

More Marley and welcome Lindsey Violet

Marley has to be only about 1 year old. He had never seen snow until last week.
Didn't know what to do, whether to walk on it, eat it.. It was pretty funny.
The Snow melted 2 days ago and it's been dry, so I've been taking him for long
walks while the weather is clear. Pretty soon, he'll have to pee in whatever space
of lawn 'Grandpa' can clear out side the door.

It's perishing cold today and tonight. May get down to the single digits and then
more snow Sunday/Monday.

Here's a picture of my new grand daughter, Lindsey Violet, born October 9th, 3:00am

'Eldest' is now preggers too, so I'll have 3 grand children to spoil=bore pretty soon.
Hope the like stories about the 50s, 60, etc...  :)  TIC

There's a new dog in Town

and his name is 'Marley'
We got a little 1y-18mo Chihuaha pup a month ago.

He is very active! ( had to hold him still to take the picture)

He spends most of the day with my wife on her couch/bed, except
when she's out at pottery or I'm taking hme for walks.

He is so active I have to take him for more, and longer , walks than
'Miss Bella'... my legs are getting worn down.
I should take my HP pedometer and document how much .
Still, we have snow in the forecast for the weekend, so there
may be a lot less 'walkies' soon.

It's hard to get a picture of him - he doesn't keep still
here's my best shot so far.

Don't know what we are going to do today - high of 26F and to tonight's low of 11F
no walkies today...

My first attempt at pottery

My wife did a lot of the work, but I actually spun it or whatever they call it.
She trimmed it and picked the glaze. I like it!

I don't know what to call it yet, maybe 'Mr Pots'... just kidding...