Happy Birthday, Violet!

Today is Violet's first birthday.

Being the kind of people who like to celebrate such "minor" events, Missy and Jon called everyone they knew and invited them to the (rapidly improving) new house. Everybody showed up. Missy's Mom, Dad, Sister (and sister's boyfriend), Marilyn, myself, Bob, Laura, Sara, Sandy, Slade, Tyler, Sam, Stevie (a complete non-relative who was spending the weekend with Sandy, Slade and the boys), Gretchen, Melissa and Tony Pepin, Jon's boss and her husband, and about 4 other friends from Jon and Missy's church, descended on the little house on the tall grass prairie. The house reminded me of the 10,000 pound truck with 20,000 pounds of canaries in it. Half had to keep flying to keep from overloading the thing.

To say that Vi enjoyed the company would be an understatement. She made out like a bandit on the gift front, and had a great time tearing into the boxes, bags and various gift containers.

Missy managed to pull this thing off in first class order, despite a house that is a) still basically undergoing extensive reconstructive surgery, and b) still being moved into. The food was great, the company was better, and the family was better still.

I can't wait for the next one.

The House - or, What I Did Last Weekend

I spent the weekend in a seemingly endless loop between Monroe and Winterville helping (I think) Jon and Missy get their house whipped into shape so they can move in.

After a little drama on Thursday at the closing (there was a minor glitch with the funding that was resolved later that evening) Jon, Missy, and I descended on their house to begin an instant rehab. I was Spackle Man. After years of neglect and modification (the former owner was a satellite TV freak and had cables running everywhere) the walls were full of divots and outright holes. My job (should I choose to accept it) was to seek and destroy said holes. If I may be so bold as to risk dislocation of my shoulder from patting myself on the back, I did a pretty fair job of finding most of them.

Friday was Paint Prep Night at the Brockmann's. The above parties, and a swarm of folks from Jon and Missy's church, proceeded to remove wallpaper, and begin to prep the patched walls for paint. Since I hate wallpaper more than Missy, I buttonholed Jon, and we headed for Lowe's, to purchase new lock sets for all of the doors. I spent the evening securing the house from unwanted visitors.

Saturday, I went to Bobby's house and borrowed his flat-bed trailer, loaded my lawnmower and gas cans, and went in search of gas. Once I found some, and picked myself up off the pavement when I looked at the price (up 50 cents from the previous day), I filled the Jeep and cans, and pointed the thing East.

Disclaimer: Politically incorrect comments follow. I know this spike in gas prices was caused by the threat of Hurricane Ike hitting about a dozen refineries in Texas. They took the wise precaution of shutting down before the storm hit, evacuated low lying areas, and did everything that New Orleans failed to do when Katrina hit. I have only one gripe about Ike. I think they should take every idiot junior reporter with a remote truck and a raincoat and send them to the desert when a major storm threatens our coasts. It's my humble opinion that the ratings-hungry morons that run cable news networks and these on-the-scene "experts" accounted for about half of the bump in the price of gas. What they did is the 21st century equivalent of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater. Concern and prudent precaution are good things. Standing outside in a hurricane with a microphone and camera telling people to evacuate or stay inside because it's dangerous to be outside is hypocritical and downright stupid. Telling the world that a dozen refineries might be damaged or destroyed by the storm borders on being criminal, and is nothing but pandering to the enviro-whackos who would love to see us all traveling by ox cart and living like medieval serfs.

Now, I feel better, and can continue with my saga.

I arrived at the house around noon, and was greeted by the sight of Jon unloading 27 gallons (no exaggeration) of paint from the back of a truck. There were about 8 cars in the driveway, and a bunch of young folks (the above church members and various friends) waiting eagerly for the start of the paint-a-thon. Being one to stay as far from paint as possible, I got on the mower. As you can seen from the picture, the lawn was suffering from neglect. It was closer to tall-grass-prairie than lawn.

Five hours later, the front and half of the side/back yard looked like the house was occupied. If I'd done this before the appraisal, it would have cost Jon and Missy another 10 grand to buy the house.

Sunday was a repeat of Saturday. Schlep the mower to the house and ride. I've got saddle sores. Maybe they're ant bites. Between mower sessions, Jon and I picked up two trailer loads of crap from the yard, and hauled it to the trash pile at the back of the lot. It was a lot easier than spreading the stuff from the pile around the yard. Unfortunately, everything we picked up was covered with ants. Amazing creatures. They're industrious, organized, 1/4 inch long and have 6 inch jaws. If they were a little bigger, I'd shoot them.

Another interesting bit of animal lore. At one point, I flushed a large rodent from a particularly thick clump of grass (think Robert Burns and substitute lawn mower for plow and rat for mouse). She (I assume it was a nesting mother) hopped around from one side of the strip I was cutting to the other. Every time I came past, she would scamper to the other side of the strip. When it got so narrow that she was running into herself trying to escape, she made a break for the next area of high grass. When I got to that area, we repeated the whole process until she was well and truly homeless.

Vermin, sore butt, bites, scrapes, and sunburn aside, I had a great weekend.

The house is progressing nicely, and today the carpet and tile installers will be there doing their bit to transform it from fixer-upper to home. Tonight, Marilyn and I are planning a visit to see how the rejuvenation is progressing.

Blessings on Missy, Jon, and Violet. You've chosen wisely. It's going to be a great place to live and grow.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZNORRRFFFF!... Huh?

If I said I had been working day and night, would you believe me? There's little reason not to, since I've been doing exactly that at the same place for 36+ years. I must be a slow learner.

Part of my problem is the nature of my business. I keep our sales agencies and other databases functioning. In most cases, nobody thinks about what I do until it stops working. When it does, it's automatically a database problem until our group can point the blame at the actual guilty party. Usually, the problem is some new, "improved" code from one of our developers. I think their motto is: "I never made a mistake in my life! One time I thought I had, but I was wrong."

But, to turn back to my insomnia and lack of blogging, I've been working on trying to make an unsupported version (that's OLD in English) of a database run where it was never intended to run. Just because something is possible, does not make it a good idea.

In this case, we're trying to run an agency on a virtual machine (a pretend server running as part of a bigger computer, but looking to the world like a stand alone server). VM and old versions of DB2 don't play nice together, so we moved the database off of the VM and onto...well let's just say we moved it. It solved our performance problem, but the maintenance stuff that has to happen each night is broken. Think of a car with the oil drain plug welded on. It's tough to change the oil. It will run OK for a while, but eventually, "She's gonna blow!"

The real problem is that the database now resides in what can be charitably called a non-production environment. It might also be called my laptop. Getting it moved to somewhere more secure is a priority, hence the lack of sleep.

Another part of my lack of blogging has been a bout of home improvement. I've been working on fixing the 937,000 little things that get ignored in the life of a 35 year old house. At least it gives me a chance to use power tools. The current project was replacing the door to the crawl space. That ate up most of last Saturday, and with luck will be finished tomorrow. Trust me when I say it will look a lot better than the old hunk of de-laminating plywood that formerly covered the opening.

Then there is the continuing saga of the homeless, Winterville Brockmanns. I spent Sunday with Jon at the new house, refreshing my drywall finishing skills while he and a friend crammed a water heater under the stairs. I need to get back tomorrow night and sand what I covered with mud over the weekend. I hear that the closing on the house is tomorrow at 3, and the painters are due to descend over the weekend, followed by the carpet folks. It's gonna be a little tight if I'm sanding my drywall patches (Patches? We don need no steenking patches!) while somebody else is in the room with a paint roller. My plan is to be in the semi-finished, new room, putting up edge guards, taping and mudding the seams in the (you guessed it!) drywall while the painters are attacking the rest of the house. One other task will be to swap out all of the locks for something where half of Oglethorpe County does not have a key.

It's going to be good to see Jon, Missy, Violet, Peabody, and Scarface (Ollie) in their new house. They ought to be just about settled in by the time Violet has a birthday at the end of the month. God bless them, they've got more energy than I can remember ever having.

Well, it's time to start siphoning the oil out of the computer dipstick tube, so I'll let you all go.

Later.