Muckhead's Chronicle

Early Night

Called it an early night and left after dinner was served. Not exactly a birdie making machine tonight, actually I find it to be so weird how I can hit such beautiful shots on the range and fail to hit one on the course. This is the case for many others so I don’t let it bother me this year.

I took a few pictures of the ball, from the perspective of what the club should see before impact, and of course in some strange places (ok this is about as far as I go to becoming artsy or creative). I did however drive the ball and embed it into a stump, but forgot to take that one (figures).

Thursday as usual

I am glad it is slightly cloudy out, as I am heading up to the club shortly for Men's Night. I am taking my camera so who know's, not going to promise anything. I will try to get some pictures.

I stayed up last night until almost 5:00am. I wasn't feeling well yesterday and ended up passing out for 5 hours in the afternoon, so I wasn't very sleepy intil early this morning. The good thing is that I managed to import all the archived data that I have to this point into MT. I know I started this chronicle earlier, but I don't know where the archived data went to; so it only goes back as far as March. I still have some plugins to install, and a few other things to tweak, but it looks like it is coming along fine.

Yesterday's and Today's Pics

OK I kind of forgot yesterdays pic, and today I actually was in bed, not feeling well. Maybe last nights feast at XO (have been eating nothing but salads and fruit then I eat a 16oz steak). Anyway I have here a couple of pics I think are kewl. The first is a picture of my printer initializing a new ink cartridge. The laser that performs this was all the rage when I first bought the thing; it is probably the norm now.

The other picture is of a solid fuel rocket that Tyler and I launched on Easter. I had told a few of you about it but don’t think I posted the picture. Anyway I thought it was kewl as I had thought I had missed the picture, and found out later I caught it just at the right time (it happens in a blink of an eye).

Duh, Which Way Did He Go George

I feel a bit like one that would make such a statement. As I have said before, I have included the camera as part of "the things to take with you when you leave the house" lately. So we head out to go to dinner last night and we stop at the bank. Oscars, a restaurant located behind the bank all of a sudden starts spouting thick black smoke from its exhaust vent, and an alarm sounds. The smoke then starts coming from the seams in the building, and the smoke gets thicker. The alarm then is shut off and the smoke turns white. Now usually this can indicate a fire being put out by water, and quite often means it is under control. We decide to leave for the restaurant as the smoke starts to die down some.

When we get to the restaurant, sirens start sounding, and over the next 20 minutes over 9 fire engines and a variety of different emergency vehicles( ambulances, police cars, and supporting fire vehicles), go by the restaurant we are eating at, heading towards Oscars. Shaaron takes a peak outside and the smoke can be seen now by all of Chilliwack, and the fire is quite large.

Did I take ONE FREAKING PICTURE WITH MY CAMERA ON THE FLOOR OF THE CAR BETWEEN MY FEET? No. I think I can chalk this one up to too much drugs as a kid, or something, I just totally forgot. I could have probably sold the pictures of the fire in it's early stages.

What Up With The Scanner

As most of you know I ran this little contest on the Ozzy picture that was posted on my my old site. Well Barry officially won the contest, guessing correxlty that it was indeed Ozzy. To this point he hasn't informed me of the scanners eventual fate.

So, I am open to suggestions, Barry ulitmately has the last call here as he won, but hey, who says we can't persuade his decision? Should it be run over by the Bronco, thrown from a cliff, hurled off a bridge into the mighty fraser river? Of course pictures would follow, but who knows, someone out there may have a legitimate use for it?

Bearing even more of my Newbie Side

This is the point where I bear even more of my "Newbie" side of MT: I have noticed before on others sites that when you post something that is similar to previous posts, it will show those similar posts as links at the bottom of the new entry. Is this a feature that can be enabled, is already enabled, or a pluging that can be added to MT?

I am posting another favorite picture from the "Chilliwack Air Show" . The funny thing here is that I have been driving around with my camera lately, ready to catch somehting really good to post. The day before the air show, we are heading into town and the snowbirds are doing thier complete show as a practice run over town. I parked the Bronco on Prarie Central in a farmers feild and we gt out and saw an even better, closer, show in it's entirety. Very kewl, but I forget my camera. The day of the show we got "Mr. I am going to get a better shot in the middle of the field, or at least be in everyone elses pictures", standing in the middle of our view.

Almost Forgot

Was busy with other things I almost forgot the picture of the day, so I am posting them now. They aren't really today's pictures, they were taken on the weekend at the airshow and the one of Marlee was after her bath last night. Tomorrow maybe I will have some pics of the tent set up and some pics of our big campout.

Missing Features in Netscape

This Movable Type stuff taken a good part of the day, but then again I have taken a couple of days off (from full time code) to get some things done around the house and to take care of some family things. The install was painless, I think I was more hesitant than anything else, as soon as I got into it it was too easy. Arcterex helped out on anything I wasn't sure of (Thanks Dude), and flipped me a few great links.

I have noticed though that some features are missing in Netscape that are supposed to be there (the button bar HTML features, trivial since I can just type in such things as URLS and such anyway), so I did something I usually only do as a last resort, I fired up IE ato take a look. Some of the missing features where there now, but they don't work (go figure). Could be an issue setting up IE properly, but I don't bother doing that, as I don't use it.

Oh well everything is working as far as I can see at this point, I will be adding or subtracting things as I go along. I managed to set up the tent in the back yard for the kids. I have to pick up an air matress or dome foam rolls tomorrow, I promised the kids we could sleep in the tent for a few nights. Not exactly a real camping trip, but it fits my budget, and I am close to work.

More of the Same

I have taken enough time to look into MT options etc...

Over the next week or so I am going to be converting all of my archived old HTML stuff over to MT format. I am also going to be setting up RSS feeds and some other options. I am still learning the basics, yet would love to jump into some of the more advanced features of MT.

IF anyone who reads my chronicle has any suggested links that they feel would help, feel free to post a comment.

OK So It Took Me Awhile

Ok, so it took me awhile to come over to MT, but I figured the html I had in place did the trick while it was there. I actually reeived a request for a RSS feed, so here I am.

Back To Normal I Guess

Well my little contest didn't go over that well, but hey I tried. It was a novel idea: take a picture of one of my little desk rats, modify it with PhotoShop, see if people can recognize it. Maybe it was someone in the wrong music era? Bear was the only respondent, so he gets to determine the fate of the HP 5500c Scanner. Like I said it can be anywhere from it changing hands to me running over it with the Broncosauris Erectus and posting pictures (sort of Office Space-esq) of the act at different stages.

Any who, it is back to the normal routine with one BIG exception today, It is my daughter Marlee's 3rd Birthday !!! Mmmmmmmm cake and ice cream. Ths will prove to be an eventful day yet.

Last Chance

Barry actually came up with the answer early in the afternoon. I guess nobody else was into it. I did post a last hint just in case there is stragglers... I asked Barry if he wanted the scanner weeks ago so you still might have a chance since he said no to it then.

Boo Hiss

Need a Hint

Ok, I am thinking that the lack of response to this idea is either:

1. Nobody reads my Chronicle


2. Nobody wants a free scanner


3. The scanner is junk anyway


4. This is not worth the time


5. I should have Movable Type so people can comment properly


6. Nobody has a clue who this is

I am hoping it is either 5 or 6 , so I am going to provide hint number one, and attempt to move everything to Movable Type in the near future. Please note this is a doll made in this persons image, but it is a striking resemblance.

Heading out on Men's Night at the Club this afternoon so i will be posting a very revealing hint just before I go and if nobody has it by the time I return then I will post a gimmie hint at that time. If nobody guesses or guesses correctly I will have to determine the fate of this poor scanner.

Who Is This?

I was thinking that I could maybe add a twist to this photo thing, and post a picture modified by PhotoShop and ask readers to guess who it is. There is no real reward other than the guess itself. I do however have a HP 5500 Scanner up for grabs. It is an old SCSI/Parallel interface one that never worked for my outlaws yet every time they took it to LD where they bought it tested OK. So I really don't know if it is junk or it actually works(every time I tried it it worked fine too).

So, here it the thing, first one to successfully guess the identity of this character can have the scanner, free, to do to it what they want. Or if you want me to run it over with the Bronco and take pictures and post them, then so be it (as long as it is humanly possible at this time). In other words the winner gets to determine it's fate (other than of course shoving it up my....).

All guesses can be mailed to me at muckhead@shaw.ca, and will only be accepted from midnight tonight(July 23rd) until midnight tomorrow( July 24th). I will post two hints tomorrow afternoon if there is no success. I think the guessing part is the easy thing..carrying out it's fate could get tricky with some of the creative minds I have the pleasure of knowing out there.

I Get Mine Online

First off I had some pics I was going to post from the weekend but it seemed to slip my mind. I was out to visit Arcterex, and take care of some business in Abby on Saturday and snapped these pictures of clouds. They were doing these sort of skid marks in the sky( not that kind ! ! ), that looked pretty neat. I even got one of the sun behind a section of cloud with a neat halo effect. Something where the naked eye would get burned on by the attempt. So enjoy or bear with them as I go on here.

I too get mine online, ehm, my music that is. I have to agree with some of my friends recent posts on this issue, and I am thankful for usenet this point. I have been collecting the odd album that I legitimately own on LP in storage, as well as collecting many others that I own on cassette, both formats I really have no use for anymore, and I don't feel like paying twice. My beef is just this, if you paid a painter to paint you a piece of art, would you need to re-pay for it if you hung it in another room? No way ! I guess it could also be put the opposite way: if you paid an artist to paint you some artwork on your car would you have to re-pay them to put it on your new car if you sold the old one? In this case I guess so. (Note: I have never been good with analogies, but I think you get the gist).

I really think that the music industry needs to come around and agree to some sort of compromise instead of either supplying us with more tariffs, taxes, surcharges, or bogus online formats. Of course not to mention the price of the product.

Anyway I thought I would throw in my 2 bits, since I have acquired a few things online as well (mp3s mostly). Today was spent working on some graphics, and such, I was supposed to go golfing at 7:12am, but didn't sleep well last night so I cancelled. I sure am grateful to be in possession of an air conditioner though, it is damn hot. Tonight I continue to work, while it is cooler.

Good Weekend

All in all it was a pretty good weekend, had some good golf games with Bear, Saturday and Sunday mornings, and with Tyler in the afternoon on Sunday. Remembered to actually bring the camera out onto the course (I have brought it a few times now and left it in the trunk, so today's pic is of Tyler in the golf cart. He isn't allowed to drive, but I told him we can blur the picture a bit so it looks like he is moving if he wants. Best shots of the weekend were Bear's shot on the 15 par 4 just off the green, and Tyler's shot on 17 just off the green (both most excellent shots with respect to length : skill ratio).

Today it was back to the grind, I am about a week behind schedule but hey, I am only human. It is not like software development is a always a timely process. Spent too much time playing with installation issues, and have now decided and have funding to buy a third party installer (NOT InstallAnywhere!). I will be taking the advice of a friend who suggested WISE Installer, but can't get it until early next week. So I will be pulling some late nights in the near future. Speaking of which I better get back at it.

Cool Nights Drive

So maybe I read it wrong but I could have sworn that Tig said that there was a theme for today, something along the lines of from an animals perspective? Since nobody else did anything of the sort, I didn't either. WE shot this one while out for another one of those drives we take in the evenings sometimes. I kinda like the out of the sunroof perspective.

I was going to take one of this field of sheep for a friend of mine ( he would know who he is and why I would be taking them) but when we came back down that road they had gone in for the night. So I took this one of the kids, which has a neat effect with us moving so fast on the highway that the background sort of blurred. I think it is neat any who. Well there is my pics for today, more to come tomorrow.

Warming Up

I thought I'd warm up to the idea of tomorrow's theme of " From an Animals's Perspective" with Tig's photo challenge and put up a pic of our fish "Jack". It is not a recent photo, but I choose it over the one I just took as you can see some of Jack's food swimming around too. He only gets them every 2 or 3 months as we don;t want him outgrowing his tank.

Went to Men's Night at the Club , but left early. I shot an 8 then a 19 on the first 2 holes. I have never done this before in my life, a first for everything doesn't even apply here. Of course it was Ironman( they lengthen everything and put the pins in places that are illegal), so the pin's are placed on impossible places on the greens. The second hole was placed midway down a severe slope, so you don't sink it it rolls back further than where you started.

I think I will be taking a break from golf for awhile, it can be a very frustrating game. I have been at it since I was 8 years old and lately I am playing as if I just took up the sport.

All Caught Up

I took the camera out to the golf course but forgot to USE IT. Tyler did very well, he started out a little rusty being his first time out this year, but soon warmed up. The round finished with me knocking it on the green on the 18th and Tyler putting in for a bird ( we were playing alternate ball).

So after supper I took this one of Tyler holding up one of his lucky balls. Of course if one child gets into the fun the other just has to be involved so I took the next one of Tweetybird holding up her favorite balls.

Catching Up

I was down for a few days myself, or at least my Box was. I mentioned in my last post that I was doing some upgrades to my box (it had been almost 2 years since I wiped it out). So I am behind on my pictures, so I am going to post a few today to catch up.

Here is Sunset, I took this one the other evening from the sunroof in our car. We went out for a drive, something we tend to do a lot of in the summer evenings. Nowhere special this time, just out to cool off and as we usually hope, see Marlee to go to sleep early.

The next evening we had to go into town to run some errands so I thought what the heck bring along the camera, so I captured this one called Content. I can't remember back far enough to where having a soother and a cold milky bottle was that satisfying. Of course she turns 3 in a few weeks and she looses the soother and the bottles on that day ( we have made a deal with her that she can have them until then).

Of course I have to say something about the upgrade itself, which hardware wise went over without a hitch. "you fix your computie?" a little one says to me as I am laying on the floor putting in the new 120GB Drive. Next thing I know she is on the floor with a screwdriver helping me "fix the computie". So, I call this one ComputieWork, as you can see my helper was having fun too. It took me a entire day to move around some partitions with PartitonMagic 7.0, and re-install all my stuff, but is was worth it, I had a lot of crap previously installed, and now it is much more "clean".

This brings us to today, and since I haven't fully got my shit together yet, the picture will have to wait until later. I am taking Tyler out golfing this afternoon so maybe I will bring the camera along and take some pictures. L8R

Hacking Away

I quit after only nine holes today, it was that bad, I was just hacking at sod! So I am home early, and thought I'd put up the pic of the day. Today I give you "Surounded". Tyler took this one last night and I was impressed due to the fact that he actually gave the figure some character with it's stance and it looks surprised as if it is surrounded (to me anyway). Taking the camera out today to try and get capture something outdoors.

I picked up a 120GB Hard Drive last night and I am picking up a stick of DDR RAMM (min 256 maybe another 512) this afternoon and a copy of Simply Accounting (latest edition needing this for TyMar). Beefing up my system a bit as I am almost out of room and want to partition my code separately and create a redundant partition on the other drive for backup purposes. Planning to wipe out what I have and do a clean XP install and reload only that which is needed for Software. I have a bunch of junk on the system at the moment.

So, I might not be back up until tomorrow morning.

Fore!

OK, so I forgot the camera last night, but it was nothing pretty anyway, my only good shot was on the 7th hole where it miraculously held up for closest to the pin. Bear would get my vote for the best shots on the 6th by all but reaching the green in two on this par 5, with two most excellent shots! He took closest to the pin in 3 shots on that hole! I did however yell FORE more than him. :P

So for today's pic, I give you Tyonicle (my son's creation and nick online), he likes to swap different Lego sets (in this case Bionicle Lego) together to come up with his own original creations. I remember he went into detail on this ones specific attack and defense mechanisms, but this early in the morning they elude me. I just can't wait until he gets to high school and college, he possesses a really good out of the box way of thinking that will take him far.

Well I am heading out for a early game of golf today as it was WAY TOO HOT last night at mens night. This way I can get back before noon and settle into an air conditioned artificial environment to code in this afternoon and evening. :)

Blasted

It was never said that this daily photo has to be a high quality one, so here, for a lack of originality I give you blasted. It is taken through my patio door in my office, might have been better if I pulled back the screen door. This is what I get from about 7:00am until about 2:00pm, beating down on my poor little office. That great big yellow dot in the sky that is hard to look at can be captured by a camera, unfortunately also it's effects are captured by my office. Time to put the air conditioner on, and it's only 9:30am.. GESH!

We decided to skip golf yesterday and instead took a drive out to Harrison Hot Springs, just a pleasant drive, didn't even get out of the car, but the breeze on the highway along with the sun was great. There is something about that effect, the wind blowing through the car and the sun beating down on your face through the sun roof, I can always snooze off ( No I wasn't driving).

Oh well, tonight is Men's Night at the Club so I have that to look forward to. Tonight they are holding a "Any Three Clubs in Your Bag" night. WHich should prove to be interesting. I am thinking of going with Driver 4iron and pitching wedge, since I can put with my 4 iron. Who knows, I am going to take my camera along with me so tomorrow's pic will be more interesting.

Long Time no Entry

In keeping with tiggersol's challenge, here is my entry for the day. I really don't know if this is incriminating or not, but it depicts what I have been up to in my spare time lately. It has been a while since my last post, so what else is new? I have been very busy, and I know it only takes a few minutes to post,but I procrastinate all day saying "right after I finish this I will update my blog". With any luck the photo challenge will get me posting on a regular basis for this month anyway.

Yesterday I presented in front of the SEP committee with success and TyMar Software is now officially approved by them. Just means business as usual for me, I hope to have the website all up and ready to go by the end of the month, so I have quite the workload from now until then. Had a pissing match with one of the committee members over my projected cash flow, but I managed to shut him up by telling him that the figures are realistic, and I thought that was what we were here for, to keep things real and make it work. Also watched a presentation given by a mutual friend of ours, that was quite impressive, but I will let him give any details.

Well back at it, going to get a bit more stuff done then heading out for 9 holes with Shaaron and Tyler, then back at it again.

Plugging Along

Not really much new to say, hence the absence of updates. Been working away on some graphics for my apps, despite outsourcing some of it, I have some dialog graphics that I decided to do myself. Bought the rights to my domain name the other day(tymarsoft.com), and will be balancing code and the website over the next 3 weeks. I made arrangements last night to put it up.

Going to take my usual night off to go to Mens Night at the Club , so in all likely hood I will have some sort of report on how that went in tomorrow edition.

Of course I am gearing up for the grand finale, on the 8th when I go before the SEP committee and prove my worth. Well back at it...