I heard this and thought “hmm, this is one of those stupid questions, yet an interesting one.” here it is: “Why does Hawaii have interstates?” Don’t interstates connected multi states together? Why are they interstates and not highways?
I know, its like one of those questions of why can’t we drive on a driveway, but we can drive on a parkway, yet we can’t park on a parkway!
Ok, so now I’m supposed to go into journalism… C’mon, it’s just a “man’s diary” really… Just a place to vent in an effort to help me maintain my blazing 35wpm typing speed. But thanks though… If it ends up getting me some sort of technical writing position it’ll make it all worth that much more. I’ll use my Blog as my resume, since it’s about the only example I have of my writing abilities, with the exception of the website itself. I appreciate everyone’s comments lately though. It’s a relief to find people actually stopping by to read them finally! It’s very encouraging, and it’ll keep me posting more and more of them.
Some walls are actually being torn down in the building today… It’s the end of an era. Oh well. No runs, no hits, no eras. We shoulda used a corked bat!
I got my awesome birthday gift from work yesterday–$5 in McDonald’s Gift Certificates! WooHoo! Can’t wait to see what toy will come with my Happy Meal!! 
Hey, maybe this is my chance to get a foot in the door though–I can submit my resume to Ronald, and see if he has any openings for a good IT guy… Think there’s a market for a digitally-enhanced Big Mac? Or maybe some “binary” fries–in the shapes of zeros and ones? Oh wait, the zeros would be onion rings–I forgot, McDonald’s doesn’t make those… 
Nothing else exciting going on this week..YET… We’re going to the Outta Site Kite Flight this weekend though, as well as going to see Finding Nemo, so we should have a great weekend. Read the rest of this posting to find out what movies I’ve been watching lately…
Some movies I’ve watched recently, and my star ratings:
Insomnia: 3.5 stars – Al Pacino.
A Time To Kill: 3 stars – Matthew McConaughey, Samuel L. Jackson.
The Time Machine: 2 stars – Pretty hokey, but great special effects.
The rest of this week I’ll be watching: Catch Me If You Can, The Recruit, and probably a few others.
Well, I’m over the hill. Or so they say. That’s all I’ve been hearing all day long. Over the hill over the hill over the hill. Everyone got a kick out of picking on me though, so I’m glad they had fun with it. Pretty tricky how they managed to coax me out of my cubicle for a so-called “broken scanner” just so they could sneak in the enourmous “40” balloons… and even more interesting is trying to get all those balloons stuffed into the back of a PT Cruiser to take them home… I had to pick up Kevin in the Neon…he wouldn’t fit in the cruiser with the balloons!
Tonight brings to a close a very nice weekend for us. On Friday evening we had <a href=”http://www.jimtrottier.com/PhotoAlbums/Matt_and_Scott/image008.htm”>Matt’s Graduation</a>, we had dinner at <a href=”http://www.cityonthelake.com/profiles/1516.asp”>King Buffet</a> Saturday evening, and this afternoon we had a <a href=”http://www.jimtrottier.com/PhotoAlbums/Matt_and_Scott/index.htm”>get-together at Mike and Ginger’s</a> to see Scott while he’s home on leave from the Navy.
I also received a nice birthday gift from Pam and Louie, and a nice birthday card from Jayson and his family. Thanks guys! =)
Kevin has a Pajama Party at school today. He was so confused this morning when I got him up and we got dressed in another pair of pajamas. The confusion quickly turned to excitement as he realized he gets to go to school in his jammies. He had to wear his regular shoes to get to school, but we packed his Taz slippers in his backpack so he can switch to them when he gets to school.
Well, one more day on the dinosaur auction. So far we’re still winning, but someone just bid $1 less than my maximum bid. My guess is that now they’ll wait until just before the auction ends tomorrow morning, and then they’ll outbid me by 50 cents or $1 and take it from me.
Kev and I went swimming last night at Rec-Plex. Three hikes to the top of the waterslide, 10 laps in the current channel (against the current) and a 15-minute hot tub and I was beat. Kev just wanted to keep going and going though. Afterward I offered Kevin a reward for good behavior. He wanted a Nemo fish. He said he saw them at the store Clayton took him to the other day when my dad watched him. Couldn’t remember the name of the store though. After a few minutes of driving he said “The store with the big “K” like MY name!” I said “K-Mart?” and he said “Yeah, that’s it, K-Mart!” So I went that way. As I drove into the K-Mart parking lot he said “No, it’s not THAT store, it’s BY that store.” and he looked all around until it hit him–two big stores down he spotted Wal-Mart and said “THERE! THAT’S the store!” I told him “That’s Wal-Mart.” so he’d remember it. He knew for sure that was the store, so we went there. We found the Nemo toys quickly. He really wanted a talking one, but I didn’t have that much on me. He settled for one almost the same size (close to a foot long) that didn’t talk, just a stuffed plush fish. It’s the orange one from the movie–Nemo himself. Kevin calls him Diddley Squat though, from the TV commercial he’s seen about a thousand times.
The top story on the Channel 7 news last night was from Kenosha–Two mysterious envelopes containing a green powder were mailed to the Kenosha Chamber of Commerce and the Kenosha Municipal Building. Both buildings were evacuated and the FBI was called in to investigate. As of this morning the buildings are still closed. Click here for more information
Ok, we’re having some difficulty finding the cages without paying a FORTUNE! (Petco). We checked several stores yesterday and we’re going back out today. Thanks for all the input everyone! I’ll make sure I post something pretty much daily… maybe it’ll even increase my site traffic. Oh, and for those who think they’re having trouble adding comments: After you “Post It” and go back to read it on the site–if it’s not there, it’s because you’re seeing the old cached page in your browser. Press F5 to refresh the page and there it is!
We’ve decided after some outside input to get two small cages for the dogs, lock them up separately when we’re not home, with just a little water each, and then let them outside as soon as we get home to go to the bathroom. We’re also removing all housetraining pads from the house to force them to go outside. Hope this works…
Just figured I’d drop a line and say hi. Will’s getting big…up to 9 lbs now! He’s getting the “Trottier belly” goin on! (Just like his dad and the other Trottier males 😉 Our dog gets us better TV reception now! She has a cone on her head. Cassie finnaly got fixxed last Friday…shes doing good. Its funny, but I think she got more balloons and cards then I did when I had surgery….hmmmm. Michelle got her long hair chopped off 😦 I have to admit, I love it, it looks AWESOME! I picked up a new hobby, I got back into R/C Nitro racing. I bought a Traxxas T-Maxx check it out…It’s my new found love (next to Michelle and the kids of course 😉
Well, I guess thats all the new updates for now. Until next time……………..Goodbye 🙂
-Jay
Our two Chihuahuas, Peanut and Socks, have been developing some bad behavior lately. Socks, and recently Peanut too, has been shredding many household items when we’re not at home. They both also shred Kleenex, but they do this even when we ARE home, and sometimes right in front of us! But we’ve come home and found many things, including photos, magazines, books, game controllers, Matt’s X-Box Live headset, CDs, and most-recently several DVDs, shredded to pieces! This last incident pushed us to take immediate action, so I cleaned out the small bathroom in the basement we rarely used, put in a food and water dish and a pad, and now when we leave the house the dogs stay in there. That was last Friday. So far they’ve already pulled up most of the carpet in the bathroom, shredded the foam padding under it, and scratched the bottom of the door to shreds. They haven’t gotten out though, so we’re not too concerned. We expected some damage though, so that’s not a shock.
They’ve also taken to “marking” everything in the house! Chairs, couches, doors, etc. etc., leaving us to have to clean, scrub, mop and sanitize everything over and over again. We tried some Hartz “Stay-off” spray on many areas, but it doesn’t phase them except for a few sneezes.
If anyone has any ideas about how to make the behavior stop (without a huge cash outlay) we’d really appreciate it. We plan on getting both of them neutered eventually, and we’ve heard this can help with the behavior problems, but we’ve also heard other people that say it didn’t help with anything when they had it done to their dogs. If you have any ideas please add a comment to this posting or e-mail jim@jimtrottier.com.
Gee, almost missed getting ANY news posted this month! Well, Sandy’s been struggling with a partially fractured/sprained ankle this month. The doctor said it’s an common injury where the muscle, when pulled can tear off a small piece of bone from the ankle, resulting in sort of a break/sprian. She didn’t require a full cast on the foot, but she now has a removable supportive “boot” she has to wear for 4-6 weeks, and a smaller brace she can also wear to lessen the pain. She’s getting around though, and still working her butt off to get things wrapped up at CirQon.
I’m also struggling with a leg problem this month. A few weeks ago one evening I started feeling weak all over and was running a fever. I figured it was the flu, so I rested that night. The next day it was worse. Sandy kept checking my temperature and it kept rising. At just over 104F we decided I’d better take a cold shower to cool down. Upon removing my pants I discovered my entire lower right leg from my knee to my ankle was bright red and swollen! Sandy called the doctor for me (the next day–I wanted to wait and see if it got better on its own) and the doctor told us to go to the emergency room immediately, and said I could die. We did, and I was put on IVs immediately and told it was an infection, most-likely from bacteria getting in through my foot. (I’ve had problems with my feet since I burned both of them on hot sand when I was younger). After a few hours of IVs and medication, I was sent home. I saw my doctor a couple days later and he didn’t like the looks of it. For an entire week, once per day he had me get an IV of antibiotics from the hospital, as well as prescribing an antibiotic pill and pain medication. The week went fairly well, and the leg started getting better. I took the week off of work, per Doctor’s orders and kept it elevated a lot.
At the end of that week I woke up with a rash. It was worst around my right knee, just above the infection, but it covered my entire body and itched like crazy. We called the doctor, and they said it was probably an allergic reaction to the antibiotics, and I made an appointment to see the doctor again following day. By that time the rash was worse, and boy was I itching! After the examination the doctor confirmed the allergic reaction and switched me to another antibiotic and an allergy pill to help with the reaction effects. At this point the infection is much better, now down to only a small remaining red area on my leg, and the rash is almost completely gone. I feel much better, with just a slightly sore leg at this point. The doctor said they can’t be sure if I’m allergic to the IV antibiotic or the oral antibiotic I had been taking though. I’d have to go see an allergist to narrow that down.
But I’m getting better, and it feels good. Now all we have to worry about is our jobs–It looks like at the end of June/Early July we’ll both be unemployed at this point. That’s the latest we’ve heard so far. I’m continuing to seek out interesting computer job prospects, and Sandy’s probably just going to pick up whatever extra hours she can get from her Society’s Assets job and leave it at that.
In The Beginning… The WebMaster created Adam (Coleco)… And It Was Good. Adam had GreyMatter. GreyMatter Was Good… And now I do too. Well, I’ve always had grey matter, but now I have GreyMatter!
I’ve taken to using Greymatter for our Family News section. As a few of you jimtrottier.com diehards might remember, I had it once before, but gave it up for some reason I can’t remember. But it’s back now, and better than ever! It’s the same GreyMatter, but I’ve tweaked it a bit, applied mods here and there for various features I like, and also learned how to connect it directly to the jimtrottier.com home page! So you’ll find the very latest posting displayed at the top of our main page, along with a list of the most-recent postings to-date, so you can just click on any of those to catch up on anything you might have missed in the past. Not that anything on here is important… It’ll waste all of your time just like every other website out there… But I hope you like it and come visit often anyway.
I’ve already learned a lot more about GreyMatter than I knew when I tried it the first time, and after seeing just how nice it can work with a little effort, I think it’s here to stay. So let the Blogging Begin!!
Our Micron PIII-850 died last night. Funeral arrangements are pending. I used it for awhile when I got home from my computer job and it was fine. A while later, just before bed I went to turn off the computers and this one’s screen was blank and the monitor was in power save mode! The power was still on, so I immediately became concerned.
I turned it off and on several times and couldn’t even get the CMOS beep! (that confirms that the initial hardware checks are ok) I knew something was fried. I took off the case cover and was shocked at the amount of dust buildup. It was really bad. I used our Shark handvac to suck it out just to SEE the components! Sheesh, we have a dusty house! Anyway, I then turned on the power to boot up again. Guess what…. BOTH the processor fan AND the case fan were dead. No movement at all. This results in the processor overheating and melting. Wonderful.
Interestingly though, the processor fan does spin about a 1/4 of a revolution instantly when I turn the power OFF. This leads me to believe that there’s a slight possibility that there’s a POWER problem, and maybe the 2 fans and processor simply aren’t getting ANY power any more. So I am going to dissect the computer in my spare time to find out more about what happened.
As for recovering my lost data–I didn’t lose a thing!! This was the first time EVER that I was fully prepared and able to recover from a computer disaster with no loss of data! About a year ago I started using the storage technique of keeping all of my user data on a second physical hard drive on each computer. I made sure my e-mail was all there, address books, Quicken data, all photos and images, and basically everything that could possibly change from day to day. I even use TweakUI for Windows XP and modified all of my “Special Folders” to point to the D drive instead of the C drive. This works really well, and sure saved my butt this time! I just took out the second hard drive and installed it in my newer 2.2GHz Pentium 4 machine. It worked like a charm, and I was even able to easily re-assign the drive letter from it’s default to what it was on my home network (‘M’ for Micron) which really helped with many applications that will still be looking to the M drive for certain documents (i.e. Quicken). XP does this nicely.
So right now I’m limping along on a mere 3-computer LAN at home while I try to figure out what to do next–restore this Micron or get a new huge hard drive for backups and put it in one of the two machines that still have an open hard drive bay.
We celebrated Kevin’s 5th Birthday last week! We took lots of photos, so be sure and check them out. On Wednesday (his actual birthday) we took Kevin to Chuck E. Cheese’s in Racine. He had a blast! We went in mid-afternoon, so the place was pretty much deserted and he had pretty much everything to himself for a while! We got a pretty nice “simulated” pencil drawing from one of the machines, had pizza and soda, and played on the games and in the tubes. He bought a Chuck E. Cheese Hot Wheels tractor-trailer and a small water-filled toy with all the tickets he won from the games.
On Saturday we had his Scooby-Doo-themed birthday party at Grandpa Trottier’s house. We had a ton of pizzas, cake and ice cream, and then Kevin opened his gifts. It soon switched from a Scooby party to a Spongebob party though! He got a Spongebob chair, Spongebob Pants and Shirt outfit, 2 talking Spongebob dolls, a bucket of Spongebob bath toys, and the latest Spongebob DVD (that makes 3 we have now). He also got a few Bob The Builder toys as well, all of which he’s having a blast with! Even Kev’s girlfriend Marissa was there, so he had a really good time playing and celebrating.
Pam & Louie treated us to Brunch and a play yesterday! It was Funny Girl at the Marriott Lincolnshire Resort. The food and the play were both excellent! Kevin spent the day with Uncle Bear while we went out.
Socks and Peanut are doing fine. Socks is close to Peanut’s size now, and Peanut seems to stay about the same size, as far as we can tell. He might be getting fatter, but that’s about it. Socks is still a puppy and getting into everything. Very bold too. He’ll steal a Kleenex sitting right next to you if you look away! And how he can jump like a rabbit and walk around in his hind legs, so he’s always jumping up on our bed and finding ways onto the dining room table to steal things. That’s a trick we haven’t witnessed yet, but we know he’s doing it because we find things from the table out on the living room floor occasionally. Now we turn the dining room chairs around when we leave the house to prevent it. The chair by the computer also requires moving, since we caught him with a couple CDs recently too. He’s a little scavenger, that’s for sure. Hopefully he’ll grow out of that phase soon. Peanut doesn’t get into things any more. The only problem we have with him now is his constant territorial marking! Anything that doesn’t smell like him yet is a potential target for him to squirt, it seems! And this includes Socks! Can you say “Smelly Dog?” (Must be the sequel to Phoebe’s song “Smelly Cat”…)
Kevin’s 5th birthday is only 15 days away! He’s very excited about it. We printed the invitations last week and they’re being mailed out this week. He sure is growing fast.
The holidaze are (is?) over. Ours was very nice. The kids got a lot of toys, and we did a lot of visiting and celebrating with relatives. It was a very pleasant season, actually. We visited Christmas Lane and the Christmas Train a few times and took lots of pictures. We did Christmas Eve per our tradition, at Mike & Ginger’s and Grandpa Trottier’s, back-to-back, and picked up Matt that evening for his Christmas vacation time with us. Matt and I (Matt, mostly) did a lot of “X-Boxing” and “PS2ing” as well, since we got a few awesome new games for Christmas, including X-Box Live! So we’ve also been playing MechAssault and Unreal Championship with other X-Box players around the globe! It sure adds a new dimension to console gaming, that’s for sure!
Sandy’s been making Smoothies with her new Smoothie Machine and making us Pizzas with her new Pizzazz Pizza cooker. Kevin’s been playing with his new cars, games, and with the McDonalds Franchise he purchased with his Christmas money! I’ve been watching a ton of new DVDs that ALL of us got, and playing ATV Offroad Fury 2 and GTA Vice City, which I got for Christmas. It’s been a very “electric” season, I guess.
Well, ten days left to Christmas! Saturday we put up the tree (took all but 5 minutes). It’s a 3-piece pre-lit tree we bought last year. By far the easiest setup I’ve ever gone through. Anyway, Sandy and Kevin decorated it and hung up the ornaments after I put it up. Saturday evening we went out to dinner at King Buffet, our favorite Chinese buffet restaurant, and then we took Kevin to see Santa at Regency Mall in Racine. Sunday (today) Kevin and I cleaned his room and Sandy wrapped a ton of presents. Oh, and I burned my first successful home movie onto a DVD-R disc today! It came out really nice. Unfortunately I just learned that only a few select DVD players can actually PLAY a DVD-R disc… Hopefully this ability will improve in the future. For now though I can play them on the computer just fine, but neither of our two DVD players digested the DVD very well. They play a good portion of it fine, but about two-thirds of the way through they choke and start acting very erratic. I checked the internet, and it’s a common problem with DVD-R discs, so there’s really nothing wrong except incompatibility.
Kevin had a nice Advent program at church tonight. He sang with the other 3 and 4 year olds. Afterward we went to see Christmas Lane and all the wonderful Christmas decorations, and then stopped at the Christmas Train house close to Christmas Lane. It was amazing, as it is every year! Santa was there tonight, talking to the kids and handing out little gifts for the kids. They also had hot chocolate, hot apple cider, snacks and cookies. The train set is a major attraction in Kenosha this time of year, and tonight was no exception. It was a very crowded street tonight, probably because Santa was there. The trains take up this guy’s entire front yard and backyard, and the tracks run throughout, and the trains even travel from the front yard to the backyard! There are a few photos in our albums, but we plan to take a bunch more during the daytime this year to give everyone a good idea of how amazing this setup really is, and to help get the word out and attract even more people! So stay tuned, we should have a new album up soon. Meanwhile, we’ve just posted the pictures from Kevin and his class’s field trip to the Jelly Belly Warehouse, so take a look at those when you get a chance.
JimTrottier.com 