The end of an era

My former and sometimes boss sent me out on a project yesterday - to decommission the AS400 computer at Eanes School District (Westlake). That's what I do these days, play the role of Dr. Death and go administer final rites to machines I have worked on for years.

In the case of "Roger" at Eanes (named for a former Superintendent), I was there from the initial sales calls, the Board meeting that approved the purchase of the 1st version of Roger and many, many hours of work on all the Rogers over the years. The first Roger was a smallish cabinet - not much bigger than a 3-drawer file. Over the years successive Rogers grew into multiple racks of hardware, and then, like a little old lady with osteoporosis, shrank into a cabinet smaller than a 2-drawer file (but with many times the power of the largest hardware version).

Yesterday I cleaned off the disk drives and pulled the plug on the last Roger, turned off the lights and closed another chapter in the life and times of my career.

But before you shed a tear, just know that I walked away thinking, "Hey! This is easy work. Let's see - how many more of these machines are out there in need of last rites?"

What's in a name?

Central Market is renowned for their enormous selection of wine - I am told. They have a big section which we can avoid, but they also stack displays all over the store, which I do pay close attention to, because once I clipped a display of bottled spirits with the grocery cart - with disastrous results. So I was amused to see a display of a wine labeled "House Wine" with a child's crayon picture of a house for its label. But that in no way matched the next display I saw.

Here's the label:


It's all in the name. I have nothing more to say.

This and that

So, I reached the one year anniversary and quit blogging. At least that's the way it seems.

Actually, this has been sort of a confusing week, with seemingly nothing in the right place. It started when we skipped church on Sunday. Well, we skipped church at Westover, since it was Senior Sunday and for the first time since I have been doing sound there I did not have the duty for this activity; in the past it has been a looooong drawn-out process to recognize nearly 30 high school seniors - none of whom we knew.

We went wandering out to High Point Fellowship in Cedar Park, which started as a church plant of folks from Westover and has evolved into a place of last resort for many disenchanted church of Christ folks. The band has something to do with that, but they do other atypical things. Like the other Sunday morning they went out to do service projects instead of meet for worship; the activity that got all the press was subsidizing the cost of gasoline at a local service station for $2.99 all morning.

Then, since we were in the neighborhood, we went back to I-35 and ate at Cracker Barrel, a place we never go to in Austin because it is half-way to Georgetown; we would need subsidized gas. We thought we would be smart, getting there early but there were a lot of people smarter than we were.

Sunday afternoon we went to the graduation exercises for Austin Grad. We know a couple of the Master's candidates well (actually Mom knows most of graduates - I know only two). Barely time for a nap and then we went to a graduation party given by the husband of the person we know best. Nice intimate little get-together with 45 other guests.

Monday Rob came in about supper-time; he had come for the visitation and funeral services (on Tuesday) of Jo Ann Davis. He describes this in detail here.

Tuesday morning we all attended the funeral, then lunch at California Pizza Kitchen before he had to make the long haul back to Lubbock and we tried to catch up with the things undone so far this week.

Wednesday I worked on an equipment cabinet for the sound system at church and Mom did the laundry she normally does on Tuesday; now it's Thursday evening and we are home after our time spent reading for the blind and delivering meals, hoping Friday's activities will bring some normalcy back to our lives. It's hard to deal with change when you are old and 'sot in your ways.

Happy Blogaversary!

I didn’t make that word up – someone else (probably from Google, Inc.) did. I didn’t even remember that this was my blogaversary. That notation just appeared on my (Google) calendar, courtesy of those fine folks in Mountain View, California who are slowly insinuating themselves into every aspect of our on-line life.

Has it been a year? I had to check to be sure, but the folks at the Googleplex had it right. Pretty amazing when you consider that the Gartner Group, a research firm that tracks all things technological, says that the average life span of a blog is merely three months and is shrinking daily. That’s not to say that there has been a dearth in creating new blogs; for a while there the number of blogs doubled in number every six months, according to Technorati, a blog search engine. But Gartner predicted (in 2006) that the total number of bloggers would peak around 100 million in the first half of 2007. Whether it did or not, I’m behind in my reading.

One hundred and one blog entries – that’s one every 3.6 days. Hmmm, seems further apart than that. I think I overachieved the first few months, but my true nature is asserting itself. These days I feel good if I get an entry every 3.6 weeks! And my SiteMeter suggests that I should keep the day job (wait – I don’t have a day job) and not try to make a living as a blogger. I did get a comment from someone in Brazil once. They wanted me to visit their blog. I don’t guess that counts.

So thanks to the 5 steady customers out there. Here’s to the second year, coming up.

Thinking about renewing our vows

Especially if we can have a reception. And if we have a reception, we need a cake. And if we have a cake...

It has to be a Krispy Kreme Donut and Dr Pepper cake.

I do!

Had lunch with the Gregersons today

David and Linda Gregerson were ministers at Brentwood the last 10 years or so we were there, for those who don’t know them. Well, David was paid to be a minister. Linda just ministered. While at Brentwood they went to Zambia several times for medical campaigns and such, and finally decided to pick up and move there. Their children were grown and their heart was in Africa, so they sold everything and went to teach at George Benson College and work at the Namwianga mission school located at Kalomo, Zambia, Southern Province. Here’s a link to their blog.

Since they are in the states on furlough and not blogging much, the last few entries concern a “Women’s Meeting” that occurred just after they left. They planned for two thousand. Four thousand women and uncounted children showed up. There was no chance of “housing” this many – they were simply looking for enough flat space for people to sleep on. And then there was the little matter of feeding them. A large amount of money came out of someone’s pocket for the mealy meal (no, I don’t know what that is, and I’m not sure I want to) that they had to go buy. It took 3 hours to serve a meal to all those people, but no one – no one – said one cross word about waiting that long. Linda said then it was the custom for the women to sing. All. Night.

Life in Africa is really, really different. I recall from visiting our friends in Guatemala that so much of the local Indian’s life was spent in just trying to stay alive. The Indians in Guatemala were fairly well off compared to most Zambians. AIDS is rampant, starvation is the next door neighbor and you only go to the local hospital to die. But we constantly read in the blog that the Zambians are among the happiest and most amenable people in the world. Except maybe for those who break in your house several times a year, or hold you at gunpoint for the school tuition money. But after that they went into Kalomo and dragged the policemen out of the bars and brought them back to the Mission so they could fire their AK-47s in the air to “tell the bad guys that they owned this earth.” I don’t think I could do what the Gregersons do. I don’t think I could even sit in an airplane for as long as it takes to get where they live.

By the way, Rob & Julie – John Gregerson is getting married in June to a young woman related to Cynthia Winters. Sara is teaching in Oklahoma, but she and a young man from Houston are helping Southwest Airlines have another profitable year.

Catching up

I let the 1st of the month slip right by me without a header update. And I'm not positive, but I think I may have used this one before. It's still a nice place and it's getting warm enough to go there.

This past week has been "Read-A-Thon" at the RFTB&D. They do a big push to get every slot filled for every day for an entire week and reach a goal of so many hours of recording. If all seven booths are occupied for the 4 available 2-hour sessions in a day, 56 volunteers are needed daily, assuming no ones doubles up (many do). Additionally, they need extra people to mark and check books for all this activity. To motivate people to agree to do this, staff and volunteers go to all the good foodie places in town and persuade them to donate wonderful things to eat! Wonderful things! Today there was a great lasagna dish from Central Market and lovely breads and spreads from several other places in town. I think one fellow just came for the food and stayed all day every day. I'm not sure he actually read anything. And they did surpass their goal by many hours, so it was good for everyone.

The other day I went to get my allergy shot. I checked in and waited, and waited, and waited. Finally, they called me in and I was fussing at them when I walked through the door. The nurse just stood there, hypodermic needles in hand, and said, "You do know that I can hurt you, don't you? Let's have none of that!"

I guess there are some battles not worth fighting.