Scouting weekend, Cancer walk, & CSSG
Another busy weekend. It was a Boy Scout camping trip for David & me, along with a Soccer game. He needed to get some things done at Scouts, so we went on the camping trip and passed on the Soccer game. Gayle had a nice peaceful time at home to read, watch a movie, catch up on things at home, and in general enjoy the quiet. For David, what with Spring Break and Scout camping trips, he'll miss 1/2 of his Soccer games. Last week, he filled in as Goalie...it had been years since he last played goalie. Back to camping... it was a good time camping at the Rainbow Scout Reservation down near Morris, IL. We did some cooking over fires & stoves. Had pancakes, sausages, juice for breakfast, with hamburgers for lunch, and your choice of hotdogs, porkchops or chicken for dinner. A long 5 mile hike around the reservation and up and down the hills was done on Saturday afternoon. Later, we had a campfire, and then much later we had a chance to look thru a 8" tracking/reflector telescope that the Scoutmaster had brought out. We could see Jupiter and it's many moons...

Also, this weekend, Sarah, our niece that attends Benedictine Univ (across the street) had gathered a team to participate in the Cancer walk - held all night long at BU. It was a little chilly, so we brought over a small tent and some sleeping bags. We also made a food run to Jewel for some chicken and hot coffee from Dunkin donuts - in a 10cup box :)

CSSG - Consumer Systems Services Group - our first consulting firm a long time ago. A few weeks back there was an impromptu gathering of some of the old-timers from that company. It was amazing to see everyone that showed up, and how they have changed... well, I guess we all have lost a little on top, and gained it in the middle:) One of the folks took some digital pictures, and I offered to put them up on my website. He sent the digital pictures, which needed to be totally resized and edited. I put them up here for the rest of the CSSG group to see.

04/29/03 @ 09:30 AM CST [link]

eBay & Medieval launchers
It has been interesting over on eBay. After my neighbor asked me to post their robotic lawnmower for sale, I started grabbing a few other things from around the house :) so far, we have sold some of David's un-used things - Nokia phone, Lego Mindstorms. Hey, this might be a better way of cleaning up. Pick it up and put it away, or else you'll find it selling on eBay.... a cleanup poem It's also interesting comparing the shipping charges from the US postal service, the UPS folks, and FedEx. For example, a 2lbs package was estimated : USPS=$4.90, Fedex=$7.20, and UPS=$8.88 another sample 5lbs package was USPS=$7.75, Fedex=$8.02, and UPS=$10.05

David needed a project for his social sciences medieval class. Several suggestions were listed on the takehome sheet, like posters, pictures, etc... but of course he needed something "unique". Well, he picked a "working medieval weapon". Not sure what the teachers had in mind, but David has built a "trebuchet". I had never heard of this, or really seen one. It is a combination of a catapult and a rotational slingshot. It is about 12" x 15" x 4" with a 20" throwing arm. Last night, we were launching jelly beans over the roof of our 2-story house :) Here is the Trebuchet site we used as a construction guide. We are only using 4lbs of pennies in a pouch as a counterweight, we can't imagine the launch using the author's 10lbs of lead weight.
04/22/03 @ 03:13 PM CST [link]

eBay, Printers, & Pancakes
We have now added a few things out on eBay for sale.
A neighbor has a robotic lawn mower and didn't have any luck selling it in the local paper. They asked if I would put it up on eBay - so I did. I then starting looking around the house for some of David's things that he has not touched for a long time - karate pads, lego robotics set, radio shack electronics lab, etc. I put those out on eBay also - here they are. I might go thru some of my computer books and put them out there also.

I've been looking at some disk upgrades for the laptops. I also am looking at replacing the Canon 4400 color inkjet printer with the extra scanner catridge. David only uses it for color picture printing, as we have a HP laser for real printing :) I was looking at the low end HP 3820 color inkjet....but now am thinking of the brand new HP1210 printer/scanner/copier. It is a VERY small box, and footprint. Take a look - HP1210 printer

Well tonight is scouts - and the pancake breakfast kickoff. We'll get our stuff and then hit the road visiting local businesses to accept their sponsorship of a placemat business card ad. Here is the Troop website for information - Troop 507
04/16/03 @ 10:04 AM CST [link]

Weekend of Leaves, Soccer, Scouts, & Anniversary
It was a bright weekend. Spent some time raking left over leaves from the yard. I think my neighbor kinda shamed me into doing it. He was working in his yard, and it looked so nice, I caught the urge to rake my own yard. I had to grab one of his yard waste bags, since I had not planned the activity, and therefore didn't have any bags in the garage.

Another neighbor had acquired a robotic lawn mower as a gift, and was trying to sell it. No luck in the local papers, so they asked if I could put it on eBay. I've bought over 50 items from eBay, but never sold anything - this was my first time. It was pretty painless, except the text description should be formatted in HTML just like a webpage.
robomower

And finally, David got to play a soccer game after 1 full year absence. Last year, in the Spring, he injured his wrist at a local health club - and had a cast for 6 weeks.... and was out for the soccer season. Then in the Fall, he hurt his other wrist at school morning basketball... and was again out for 6 weeks and the soccer season. David wrists

Over the weekend, we had two nice events - I went to a Boy Scout Order of the Arrow ceremony to welcome the new members into the brotherhood as it is called. The OA as it is called, is a honor camper society of the Boy Scouts. You are elected by your Scouting peers, and it is based on cheerful service to others. It was nice to see that the indian ceremony was still impressive and made me proud to be part of the Arrow from over 30 years ago. OA history & lore

And then to wrap things up, we all went to the 50th anniv of an aunt & uncle. It was funny, that we just saw most of the exact same people down in florida for Gayle's parent's 55th anniv.
04/14/03 @ 10:59 AM CST [link]

Swim Team
Tonight is the swim team registration. www.srswim.org - I wish I had posted the flyer on the clubhouse door prior to the soccer season, as then the teams would have seen it as they were going in to pick up their info packets, uniforms, etc. Oh well. What with spring break, and getting the flyers to school, it was tough to make sure that any of it really happened.

04/10/03 @ 10:26 AM CST [link]

Getting Greymatter templates to work
I've updated Greymatter to use some other HTML templates,
and have started playing with the variables and layout.
There is one problem though. The new templates are using CSS style sheets to create the right hand column of links, along with the small thin bars - these don't appear to be working properly when using Netscape 7.0, but they do work ok when using IE 5.5 - must be different in how Netscape interprets and handles the CSS - I've have to play with the HTML in the template CSS to see what will work with both Netscape 7.0 and IE 5.5.
Also, wanted to see how the "main" text entry block is different from the "more" text entry block.
This is the main entry text block.
posted on Thu, 04/10/03 @ 10:19 AM CST [more..]

Florida
Gayle's folks were celebrating their 55th anniv, and wanted everyone to come to Florida over spring break to get together down at the condo. We flew down, along with the rest of the families. It was a tad cool when we arrived, and headed over to Orlando for a couple of days. Grampa, David, & I drove to Orlando to hookup with a couple of family members already going thru Universal. We met, had a great time, and stuffed ourselves silly. This was David's first encounter with a rollercoaster...yeah, it's our fault. But he loved it. He went on the Hulk corkscrew/upsidedown/accelerated coaster twice. He also went on the dueling coasters called Fire & Ice.
04/10/03 @ 08:18 AM CST [link]

Snow on the ground
well - just returned home from the florida spring break trip, and there is about 1" of snow on the ground.
yeah, it's only an 1" - but it still is a far cry from Tampa -
04/09/03 @ 07:01 AM CST [link]

Weblog software started
Wanted to get some kind of online journal installed to see how it works, and if it would make sense for using on some of our other websites.
Happen to find this one - called Greymatter -
http://noahgrey.com/greysoft/
and it seems to be working out great. It is written in Perl, and just has a few scripts loaded to the webserver. The concept is to separate the formatting from the actual content. Templates are used to hold the formatting, along with using variables for replacement of data elements. This is very similar to the Intershop software that we used to to teach -
So - just downloaded it, FTP'd it over to the webserver, and now it is up & running.
04/09/03 @ 12:38 AM CST [link]