Jeff Duke

It was so cold, within 5 seconds of stepping out, I literally could not feel the fingers of my exposed right hand and it was painful.  This is likely a testament to my leisurely weather conditioning combined with the very cold weather outside this morning.  For the second time I recall, a pair of birds resting on our porch for warmth were startled into flight as I opened the door.  One of them was so startled it flew up into the eave of the porch and could not navigate away, so I went back inside for a moment until the bird was able to figure it out and flew away.

I saw 17 degrees (F) for a short time during my drive into work, but it was 22 by the time I arrived.

I arose and left well ahead of schedule this morning, dressing in a recently purchased new shirt, shoes and socks, and in my finest pair of slacks.  There are few reasons to do this on the way to work.  I’ll leave it to you to discover.  There may be rejoicing later today, but likely more waiting for a response.  I’ll take either option in stride however.

Here’s my self portrait for the day:

The weekend was good although I did not quite get to sleep in as much as would be perceived as optimal by myself.  I still have a slight head cold, with the usual extra drainage as the primary symptom.  My ears are a little blocky, but at least my throat is no longer sore.

Other distractions for the weekend included a new bed for Laurie’s grandmother who is a wonderful lady, who I was very happy to be able to help out.  Also, in keeping with the above theme a trim up on my hair also was necessary.  Finally a wave from an old coworker last week was also interesting, in the timing at least.  I had not seen or heard from him in about 5 years, suddenly he leaves a message on our answering machine.  His point of discussion was totally ironic, and unnecessary at this point, but not totally unwelcome.  It feels good to have made a strong impression on people.

I will be working on the podcast tonight.  Release is tomorrow, unless I lose my voice again.

More Later-

Jeff

The legendary 1962 Chevy Biscayne, the “Hot Rod of the Year” award winner in all of its precision crafted and fitted glory is up for auction at eBay.

Reserve is not quite yet met, although it is moving quickly past  $100,000 and sits presently at $110,100.  This bad boy has a twin turbo’d 406 turning 1400HP.

This is nearly 10 times the horsepower in my car.

For some reason I instantly though of Adrian when I saw this beastie.  What do you think?  Can you see Adrian tooling around in this crate?  I think he’d look fabbo in it!

The auction is HERE, don’t forget to bring your pennies!  I just want to know how those rear wheels come off!  285R22’s, are you kidding me!?  Wow!  Thanks to Jalopnik for the direction on this one.

From Homestarrunner.com, here is my stuffed “animal”, who complains if you kick him.

The real point of this post is to test out image linking from my Flickr account.

Anyways, here he is:

Hmmm… looks like it works quite well!

Very very neat.

And I do believe I really did fix the bug yesterday where it deletes all of my photos when I delete a spam blog.  Whew, I was nearly going crazy.  I’ll try to get my header fixed up with a new image soon, since it was deleted again before the fix was implemented.  *sigh*

In completely different news?  I’m headed to a little adventure of sorts on Monday afternoon.  Not sure if it will be life changing or not, but suffice to say, I’m respectfully nervous.

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Jeff

One of the teenage youth that goes to our church woke up yesterday and the way I understand it, without very much feeling in her arms and legs.  She attempted to get up, but fell, and subsequently was unable to feel anything from the neck down.

After a long day and evening at the hospital she has started to recover some feeling and movement but at the moment, the doctors are at a loss.

Having seen the power of prayer over and over, I’d say it is certainly warranted in this case as well.

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Jeff

How does Live Writer work with photos?  I have no idea, here’s a test!

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Jeff

This weekend was incredibly distracted.  I almost feel disconnected with it.

Friday evening’s birthday bash for my step-mother-in-law was fun.  Got to briefly see an old friend of mine, Paul, who is knowledgeable in all things, literally.  Quite a fun guy to hang out with.  Anyways, we went to Red Lobster, and Laurie ordered her usual snow crab selection and found it quite tasty.  I had popcorn shrimp.  I’m not a big seafood guy, but I like shrimp well enough.

On the way home, Laurie told me everyone in the party was headed over to her father’s house for ice cream and cake.  I told her I did not feel up to it, due to being in the midst of my devil bug, (sore throat).  She agreed, and called her father to tell him we would not make it.  We stopped by the pharmacy to pick up some supplies and Laurie indicated to me she didn’t feel too well.  Upon arriving home, within 10 minutes, she got sick.  And thus started an all night battle with food poisoning.  It wasn’t the worst case I’d seen, but it was bad enough to keep her up nearly all night with short breaks for a nap in between runs to the bathroom.  I took some Nyquil to finally try to get some rest, and slept through a lot of it, but early in the morning she finally had to wake me up, indicating she was really sick.  I made another run to the pharmacy to find some items to help patch her up.  She had an incredibly important meeting later that day for the school.  Fortunately, we were able to patch her up well enough to make the meeting and very few people noticed she was ill at all.

Good stuff.

Once back at home, she was able to sleep and since then has not gotten ill.  However, Sunday morning, she awoke with a severe migraine, and had to take her miracle medicine to knock it down, which unfortunately, also knocks her down, so she missed church.

I proceeded to church, since I was the only available soundman for the service, and directly after the last of the music, I went home to be there for Laurie, whom I found was sleeping soundly sans headache.

A little more work done on the final part of the podcast with Jakko, but with all of these distractions, I really didn’t get anything done of value.  I’ll be trying to play catchup tonight.  I really get dogged by several people due to the fact that I don’t really get paid for this work on the site.

They ask me why persist.  I continually don’t have an answer, save for, “It needs to be done.”

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Jeff

Yet I am still at work.  I feel pretty sick, sore throat, and I believe a mild fever mixed with a fair amount of drainage.

How lovely, yes?

Some interesting information from today and yesterday, but nothing to share as of yet.

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Jeff

A report from the front lines of cold weather… well, maybe it’s not all bad, it was 31 near my house, with no ice on the road, a little on my car. 

The white dots are not snow, but just rain on the cheaper lens of the already cheap camera.  It honors sufficiency for the purposes today. And then a closeup of the HP building: 

The report?  There is ice on the top of the parking deck next to my office, but this is the only place I’ve seen it yet.  Supposedly it will be staying near freezing until 2PM for my county but not for where I work. And I was so looking forward to hanging out at the house all day with my wife.  *sigh* In other news, I’ve discovered the world of HDR in photography terms.  Very very fascinating…  See example linked HERE More Later- Jeff

A few days ago I awoke thinking, “There will be something unusual happening today.”  I was not disappointed.  And thus, it has been so for the last few weeks, some good things, and some difficult things.

Today was the first day I was the most senior person on the team in terms of being on the help-desk.  It was fine, but there was a noticeable absence of energy.  A little sadness too.  I had worked with Patrick for quite a while.  Some prayers for Patrick as he embarks on a pretty interesting and likely difficult new job.

Prayers continue for some continuing issues in varied facets.

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Jeff

hahaha…

Very funny demand I saw on Digg this morning:

“Who Moved My Photos?!”

This will likely be more funny to me than most, but I still love it.

In a related note all of the uploads for my blog suddenly disappeared.  Not sure what happened, but it only underlines the realization that the blogs section is not a good place to “store” things, only a good place to “show” things.  I’ll try to get the photos fixed later on.

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Jeff