Soooo then...

yeah. I've been sick. or at least playing at it. Not sure if it's pig flu or not but I figured I'd better make myself scarce at least until the symptoms were milder. I've been out for three days which is rare for even a sickling like me. But since I got since sunday night, I pretty much have been sick for the entire work week. Although, simply to stay connected and not feel like such a leech, I've been working about 4 hours a day from home. This day is getting to be more like 8 though. I feel pretty decent right now, so I'm hopeful that I can get back to a semi normal routine. It's been interesting being home with the kids and seeing what Rebekah deals with every day. I freely admit that she has the toughest job. But hey, she likes it. At least some of the time. I think...

Anywho, half the fam is at church and I put the girls to bed with a perfunctory "good night" answered by wails of life-altering woe. Titus has found my soft spot and used his charming smile and good behavior (he must have been saving it up) on me to watch some cartoons and now he's playing the wii. Personally, I'd like to get back to watching Psycho. I've never seen it before so it's pretty interesting. on a side note, Titus is playing Wii Indiana Jones and finds it quite amusing that by pushing a button he can make the blonde chick from the temple of doom scream. I think that's supposedly her "weapon." silly woman.

Anyway, I still have to get up on my roof and clean out the chimney. Hopefully I won't fall to my death, but if I do Rebekah has it made. I hope she doesn't read this....

Fall is one of my 4 least favorite seasons

I know people like fall because it's cool and ooh, the leaves change color and stuff. But hello people, Fall is a season of death and dying. The leaves are pretty because they are dying. The days are cooler because the sun is no longer smiling on us. There is less light too. And worst of all, Fall brings Winter. But Winter is just doing its job so although I find it unpleasant, it's like the Grim Reaper or maggots. It serves a valuable purpose. Ok, so my logic is flawed but I still don't like Fall. I've been working hard the past month and a half trying to get ready. I'm not quite there, but I've got most of the critical items crossed off my list. Now it's just the normal fallish stuff I have to worry about. I put a pellet stove in upstairs, but since it's in an enclosed alcove (aka attic) I  need to do some re-arranging with a power saw. Last weekend I bought two more cords of wood so hopefully those needs have been met. And we put plastic on the depression era windows. And I sealed up the swamp cooler. And I, geez I'm boring myself.

Ah well, Rebekah has been blogging so I'm not sure that I have to really say too much about the fam. The kids are doing pretty good. Swine flu (I've given up on calling it h1n1) has been running through the area pretty bad, but i'm hopeful the worst is over. I have heard from several people who know people who were put in the hospital by it but no deaths. Of course, they're no vaccine available and by the time there is any it'll be too late to make much of a difference. Such is life. Or death. If you die that is. But then the swine flu vaccine is the least of worries.

I took the kids to a corn maze. correction, I took the boys. Forrest enjoyed it a lot, but Titus was scared of being lost forever. There were three mazes but since Titus wasn't having as much fun and time was an issue so we wandered around a bit. Fed some goats (see facebook for a picture) and then mozied on out. I've had to work a lot this weekend due to problems so I'm missing church now much to my irritation. Well, not much to say of interest. my brain is tired from being up late last night and I have to go to work now.

BTW, did you know they're airing a remake of that great mini-series (and subsequently a series) V? Check it out on ABC.

It's no fun...

...picking on your colleagues if they are mentally impaired by a migraine. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. dead fish.

For the first time since I've had kids

I had a knock down drag out (yeah, there should be some dashes in there but you're not my english teacher :p)
... with my kids. 4 of them. The babies stayed in bed. The girls and the boys did a cage match with me. Since I've been exercising and lifting weights a bit, i had a bit of stamina. The girls would launch themselves at me and I'd catch them and toss them at the boys. Of course, Titus did that a bit too but he's 45 pounds so I had to be a little bit more careful when I tossed him. It worked well and although Titus hurt my ear, Forrest's ear, and Serenity's head he seemed none the worse for wear. Everybody had fun and no major injuries resulted. The girls got tired though and ran a little short on patience so I put them in bed and bailed. They screamed bloody murder at me since they were so wound up, but I haven't really heard them since. Right now I'm waiting for Rebekah to get back from the store. babysitting 6 kids. Who would've thought I could do it and not end up in leavenworth?

Avoiding electrocution...

...is time consuming. I spent a long time today adding three circuits to the house. I thought I just had some simple stuff to do, but avoiding electrocution really slowed me down. You can add a circuit to a breaker relatively safely without turning off the power, but it's dangerous. And by adding three at once it was really slow. Also, none of my circuits have been grounded (the third prong) so I wanted to do that with these. Unfortunately, that required some adjustment to a clamp which once I loosened it enough for the wires fell off. So, I spent 10 minutes saying to myself "I'm gonna die" as I tried to fit it back on without bumping the Idaho Power line. Ok, so the burning (or shocking hehehe) question you have been asking is why didn't I turn the power off? Two reasons. First, because last time I turned it off the breaker wouldn't "click" back on and I had to call an electrician who gave me some tips and tricks. Second, because I knew it would probably take me a couple hours under the best circumstances and I didn't want to further torture my wife without heat and electricity.

OK. I'm tired. Rebekah is blogging pretty regularly which is great, but a consequence is I'm not very motivated anymore. plus I'm tired. Did I mention I'm tired?

Ironically enough, I did get shocked pretty good once but it was inside the house on one of the new circuits that had a tiny strip of insulation stripped off it on the back. I didn't make a mistake but I still got a nice little "shock to the system."

Hey, maybe I"ll go to bed. seems like a good idea since I'm tired. Oh, and sore. Did I mention sore?

Favorite question of the day

"Do you guys have any kleenex that I can take into the conference room?"

Why? Lots of crying going to take place?

Favorite song of the day

"I hate everything about you." Not really, but it's catchy don't you think? Just imagine wandering the halls at working singing that under your breath. In my case I think I'd have a visit from SWAT rather soon.

So, funny story. My kids like to go to jail. Or well, "the jail." Why you ask? Have I been a frequent visitor? No, well, not in the sense that one might think. And no, it doesn't have anything to do with me wandering the halls hating people and muttering "redrum." The long of it (we passed short a long time ago, laying on the side of the road beaten and bloody). The long of it is you see, well actually you don't, but you read. So, the long if it is that visitors of the jail in Ontario sometimes need to work for their room and board and they do so in various and sundry manners including wood gathering for humble patrons such as myself. The wood, although of dubious quality at times, is inexpensive and if I stop by at convenient times I can have current visitors help me load the wood while they insult the size of my truck. I usually avoid the latter as my schedule usually doesn't mesh with theirs. Anywho, so for my kids the jail isn't a bad place. that's a bad thing. I know that. I need to call it something other than "the jail." Maybe the center for the delinquent and naughty adult people. my kids would be abbreviating that to "the center" in no time at all.

Another mildly amusing story for dweeby techy people out there (are we all dweebs just because we can bend electronic things to our will by hacking phones, routers, video consoles (let alone computers) that mere mortals can barely operate?).

So, our beefy server that I mentioned on Sunday... What? What do you mean you didn't read it? Oh, so you read it but you didn't understand it? sigh. what am i going to do with you. Anyway, that's not important right now. What's important is that I have your attention now! Ok, so back to the story. So, we had a server and it needed a new processor/memory board which was on a daughter card (no jokes about son or grand-daughter cards please). Unfortunately, HP decided to save a buck and send us one without a processor so we had to move ours into it. Not a huge deal except it needed thermal paste reapplied. Well, suffice it to say that anything with paste and techies isn't going to end up well. Three men (well, two men and one techie chick) entered and the smart one (me) backed away from the thermal paste. The other two spent about twenty minutes trying to spread a thick and unfriendly good evenly over the processor. After awhile they called it good. I ignored them and read my e-mail. Then they kept asking me questions until I was forced to respond with a gentle "I hate everything about you." Then the story gets boring as we put aside our differences and installed the card with no major burnage. We'll see how long the processor lasts before it melts a whole through the server causing thermonuclear detonation.

I still need new speakers for my entertainment system.

Favorite quote of the day

"Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly. "
Plutarch

Long day

I try to avoid working on most sundays. but it can be pretty dang hard when that's the official maintenance window. Even so, it's not usually that big a deal. But today we needed to add some tier 3 storage to our SAN. Man is that stuff expensive. Our tier 1 probably costs about $30k per TB. I could be high there, but we paid that much for 10 GB of tier 2 which is crappy SATA vs. fiber drives on our tier1. So, since we need space but cash is king, queen, jack, ace, 10, 9, 8, 7, 5 (but not 6), 4 & 2 (nope. 3 neither) we added our own disk array to our virtual storage software. Slower and more complicated, but much much cheaper. Only $10k for 12TB. We could've possibly done it for about 4k if we wanted to build it ourselves. But, by the time you factor in things like carrying spare parts and downtime it starts to not look like a good idea. We actually tried a Drobo Pro quasi-SAN, but it couldn't produce IDE speeds. Our needs were modest but it failed abysmally in that area. And we had that thing loaded too. It had 8 2TB drives for a total of 16TB raw. pretty impressive for a little unit. We got all that for $3500. Unfortunately, it didn't do that job so that was that. Working on enterprise systems is so weird because the premiums for this stuff is insane. But the industry works on supply and demand so the price is high. Yeah, i know this is boring. It wouldn't have taken so long but our system was configured oddly (at best) and so when we hooked the array to it, Windows wouldn't see it. After much trial and error my cohorts in crime figured out that the setting was configured incorrectly (a setting that they inherited when they took over the system). Once they figured that out, we were golden. Well, brass at least. I wasn't actively involved (thankfully) with that ordeal, but I had to shut down the virtual environment. 60+ servers on 6 hosts don't go down (or up) quickly. But, thanks to the beauty of technology (vmware), about all I had to do was Ctrl-A (select all) and right click and tell them to shut down and then watch watch watch them. Then we moved some stuff around and when we were about all done we powered up one of our beefiest servers (32 GB of RAM w/ 4 dual core procs) and it blue screened in a way I had never seen before. Unfortunately, this server was purely physical so no leveraging the server onto other hardware without pain pain pain. And this was the second most important server in our enterprise. We have one whole division that screams bloody murder if they can't get their reports every few hours. A day or two outage would be brutal. So, we are all looking at each other thinking expletives in our mind. And we're all of one mind wishing that this had happened a year later. But, time stops for no company and the economy be damned the server was almost four years old. Of course, having a piece of hardware that costs $20k minimum to replace is hard to justify when blood is being spilled in the trenches. So, the only clue we have is a red light on the front of the server. After doing some troubleshooting, we figure out that it might be the RAM that's bad. Well, to be honest, I pulled the server out a little and it had pretty yellow lights on DIMMs 5 & 6. It was kind of cool on the inside. Every proc had its own cell board complete w/ RAM and more pretty yellow lights signifying bad things. Unfortunately, swapping the RAM around only proved nothing. Oddly enough, yanking the RAM for the entire board allowed the server to boot. So, the server is up and running with a lowly 24GB of RAM. oh well, HP's gonna love us demanding the send us a new board. We paid about $800 for the warranty. Good investment me thinks.

ok, if you actually read this post pat yourself on the back. If you read it without falling asleep (nodding off is ok), then you may have a piece of chocolate. If you read it, stayed awake, and understood what I was talking about then you might consider getting a life. I hear e-bay is a good place to start.

dagnabit

Just found out that Forrest has bad eyesight (probably from my side of the family) and is color blind (most likely from Rebekah's side). I guess being color blind passes down through the female side and afflicts boys most often. Although his vision is poor it's not so bad they want to put him in glasses. I mean, I haven't seen him walk into too many walls. But, they'll check it again in a year or whenever he starts getting beat up too much (by the heretofore mentioned wall, not me or any adult types).

It's so quiet

I woke up this morning feeling a bit better and even (for a moment) considered going with my wife on the outing with the kids. It's so hard to do things with as many kids as we have that we have started to find the events that are fun for kids and parents and inexpensive as well. Our two favorite events (well, my two) are the Military swap meet (4 miles from my house complete with rides for the kiddies and a car crushing) and the Ontario Air Faire (10 miles away) which has aerobatics and lots of cool military planes. The best thing about these events is that they are free and not oozing with masses of humanity like the carnivals. Rebekah took the four oldest this morning (leaving the babies with Keren) and will be home in a bit. She said that they were all really good and nobody even got in trouble. That's a medium sized miracle and a a testament to how interesting it is for the kids. I regretted missing it but I would've taken my disease riddled body and gone if Rebekah hadn't done it. But my symptoms have improved after taking a dramatic turn for the worse yesterday. I came home at 3pm and slept until 8. then I went to bed about 11pm and slept until 8am. Then I took a nap this morning. I'd probably still be sleeping but my stupid calves have been so restless. That's the ones on my legs not the the ones in the pasture next door. Actually, I'm not sure if there are any veal on four legs over there or not. I know that there are cows and a bull. I could get up and look, but well, I'm just not that motivated. You see, first I'd have to set my laptop down somewhere. Then, I'd have to stand up. Next, I'd have to lean over and pull the blinds. And the final straw is moving my eyeballs. And it might be all for naught since a calf could be laying down in the grass and I might not see it anyway. All this cow talk is making me hungry. Watching the "Life of Brian" right now. I think God has a sense of humor. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go find a massager/vibrator thingy and see if that makes my non-veal calves feel better.

Kids are expensive

duh! But I was assuming we were talking about food, clothing, medical care, etc. What I didn't fully appreciate was how much damage that they would do to property. Just yesterday my sound system damaged probably 5 speakers because Serenity turned the volume on my amplifier to maximum. I put in a movie which autoplayed and ya know the roaring lion? Yeah well, it was so loud that all my kids were crying and I was yelling because I was so surprised and mad. <sigh>

I spose it was time for my girls to do some major damage. They've been pretty limited thus far. I spose I shouldn't feel bad, my friend Kelly has had his youngest do thousands of dollars in damage. He flooded an upstairs bathroom.

So, hear I sit watching the episode of Buffy where she kills herself to save humanity and blogging while desperately ignoring the static everytime the background music plays.

BTW, thanks to whomever (or whomsever) gave us the generous donation. I'm thinking about starting a telethon. Man did I hate those when I was a kid. I swear, that was the only time there was anything good on PBS. I remember watching the "Flight of the Phoenix" and it took forever due to all those stupid smiling people with their ringy ding telephones. I didn't really like the movie anyway. Who can like a movie where Jimmy Stewart is a model plan bigot. sheesh.

This week has been rough. I first had a bad cold that put me in bed for a day and then today my boss sent me home from work (what a nice boss) because I looked so bad. I'm feeling decent now so I'm hoping a decent nights sleep will help me end this week on a more positive note.

Forrest also got really sick with some stomach bug about a day before my last bout. It's hard to hear your wee ones kissing porcelain. Clell is doing a bit better but I still call him snuffy. So far the rest of the family is mostly healthy and I'm praying they stay that way.

btw, what's decoupage anyway?

Sweet! a movie called Zombieland

It's as if they read my mind. or my blog. or something. check out http://zombieland.com

Ever wonder how many different iterations of transformers there are/were? Yeah, me neither. But apparently there's a few. Our boys like transformers and I heard Titus singing the theme song "Transformers, more than meets the eye. Transformers, Robots in disguise!" this morning. Anyway, the toys in the stores are either from the movie or the movie or possibly the original. But you can also buy animal transformers which seems odd to me. At least my kids seem happy as long as there are big robots fighting. As I sit here now, Optimus Prime and Soundwave are apparently having a battle of the "lead guitar."

So, it appears that my fly vacuum isn't that original a thought. However, I submit that mine is unique simply because of the pure vitriol backing the destruction. Most of the alternatives use electricity or simply trap the insects. And yes, they do work with spiders. Maybe I could mix and match a vacuum with some sort of spring loaded frog's tongue (synthetic of course) for added range.

Well, Rebekah has been potty training Serenity the past few days. It's been going much better this time. Doing one at a time makes it a wee bit less stressful I think. As cruel as it may seem I think it's healthy to split the girls up a little bit more. We met a nurse in the NICU who was a twin and she was really resentful because everything she did for most of her life was merely one half of the infamous "twins."

I'm desperately trying to get ready for winter. Yeah, seems a bit premature but I have to get at least 3 cords of wood, put on the storm door, put in 2 windows in our bedroom, install the new pellet stove upstairs, buy a ton of pellets, and I'm sure I'm forgetting something.

Clell is still sick. He snuffles a lot. Rebekah took him back to doctor (the one I said we weren't going to anymore) and the Dr. was fairly indifferent but gave her a prescription for amoxycillin. I think after this experience Rebekah will agree with me to switch.

And can someone tell me why clubbing midgets is wrong when it feels so good?

Favorite song title

For A Pessimist I'm Pretty Optimistic

Favorite Quote of the day

"Just because you're better than me doesn't mean you can be all superior."

Busy day today. I have to do some computer workage. Then I have to unload a little pellet stove and get it upstairs (only weighs about 250 pounds) and try to install a screen/storm door. All before 6pm tonight when I have an engagement w/ some nerdly guys to play games but all the people I know are probably bailing on it. Cool huh?

But, Forrest has started school this week and is doing well.

Although, I'm worried about his hearing as well as vision. He might be color blind and seems to have poor vision in one eye (his left). He also failed a hearing test on one of his ears.


As distasteful as it is, due to the increase in medical premiums putting normal private insurance out of our grasp, we put the kids on CHIP/Medicaid. Interestingly enough, we only have to earn another $18k more before we don't qualify anymore. I don't see that as being a danger anytime soon. The good news for the kids is that they will be able to get better care now. Ironically enough, it's harder to get kids vaccinated if they have private insurance. I took Titus in a couple months ago to the local clinic to get vaccinated. They told us that they couldn't vaccinate Titus because we had private insurance. Sad huh?

weary

just keeping my head down and trudging along. these are the best years of my life so i am told.

sigh. where is a midget when you need one?

first post from my phone. we will see if it works or disappears into the annals of history that never was and never will be.

Taking Chance

I'm 35 minutes into this movie and my eyes have emitted more saline laced fluid during that time than in all of the past year.

If you ever watch this movie, make sure you can do it in one sitting in peace.

Fascinating

I was informed by my boss that there was a report/comment (not sure if plural) made that I wasn't at my desk enough. I didn't realize that I had to spend a certain percentage of time @ my desk. I work in the datacenter, the lab, with users, and occasionally take lunch and <gasp> visit the restroom.


What on earth do you do with a comment like that? My boss is happy with me, but apparently somebody higher up isn't? I need to go watch Office Space again.

Favorite quote of the day

"Man up Fargo"


I can see using this on my kids when they're crying. And my wife using it on me when I'm whining.

Life in the Grant Ballard house

Soooo, what's been going on here recently? Well, last week we took the first vacation of the year to go visit my parents. My brother Forrest was visiting with his family and I needed some mechanical help so it seemed an opportune moment. Since we had to take two vehicles, for once space wasn't a problemn. Although spending money on gas for 600 miles of travel is very distasteful. So, we embarked on the 150 mile trip to Fairfield. With road construction in Boise and in Elmore county and a lunch stop in Mt. Home, it only took four hours. Four hours. argh! Thankfully, when we got there Forrest and his wife graciously gave us two of the three bedrooms available. But Rebekah still had to sleep with the girls which wouldn't have been so bad, but Liberty woke up every few hours screaming for some odd reason. So, needless to say between that and the babies, Rebekah didn't get a lot of sleep. So, we cut our trip short and headed home on Saturday afternoon. We made it to the Gaskill reunion which will be the absolute last thing of that type we do until our children are much older.

As far as I am concerned, my big focus is on becoming less of a big fat slug. Blood tests showed that I was 60% slug and well on my way to becoming king of slugville (yes, it's a real city. It's 5 miles from Richfield). So, since I don't have any time I have parlayed (I like that word) my lunch hour into a frantic workout session at a gym. So far it's been good. I think i'm down to 59% slug easily. maybe even 58%.

Well, since our health care premiums went up so much we're not sure what to do. I think we qualify for government assistance, but that sticks in my craw. I'm trying to decide which is more important: my conservative principals or my children's health. In health related news, we took the babies to Caldwell to get immunized. A couple days and bad fevers later, they're doing well. Trinity is playing with some toys (the first time ever) and Clell is doing great. Both of them are doing fine on the growth chart.

The girls, well, are girls. screechy, whiny, cute, and adorable. All at the same time.

The boys are doing well. Forrest is excited to start school w/ the Idaho Virtual Academy. titus feels a bit left out. Titus really wants to go visit Grandpa again. It's about all he talks about sometimes. As Rebekah and I were heading back from the Dr. on thursday we went through Parma and saw they were having a double header of the Transformers. I'm pretty lazy (see slug in the dictionary) and thought that I should take Forrest. But I hate to leave Titus out. So, we went on the coldest night of the summer I think. But it went well.

Sooo, long boring blog post but I figured I should do something. I'm not sure if there's anybody who reads this blog who isn't on facebook anymore. I will keep the blog going but I may start posting the pictures on facebook exclusively. Not sure. But my phone takes pretty good pictures and I can now upload them to facebook easily. Still pondering. In the meantime, stay classy America.