Geeks In Action

The whole family went for a bike ride today. We stayed within a couple miles of home but did try out new routes. We went down a dirt road that ended at a gate that was locked and there was a no trespassing sign. Vegetation was pretty thick around the road and there was some watery areas so I kept an eye out for snakes. We rode back up out of there and stopped by one of the large ponds near Wycliffe so the kids could get a drink and have a snack. We brought water and granola bars.

I stopped near some grates over pipes into the pond so we could walk out on them and look out over the water. It looks like maybe a spot to try fishing some time. There were some holes carved into the side of the pond so we told the kids to watch their step around them. As we all walked about looking, I looked back at one of the holes and saw a very large snake coiled up. So I gathered Ingrid and the kids away from it and then we watched it for a while. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it opened it’s mouth and that led me to believe it might be a cotton mouth. I checked online and it was definitely a Florida Cottonmouth.

We walked around right by it for a few minutes before we realized it was there. It’s a cool day here (for Florida) so maybe that helped keep it from wanting to be active. From what I’ve read they are like most animals anyway and stay away from people if they can. I’m still glad nobody got bit. Once we realized it was there we were able to appreciate it from a safe distance. Pictures below – click on them for larger. I took them with my phone so that aren’t that great.

We just had a couple good friends and their three beautiful kids visit with us. It was so great to see them. They are in the middle of their new staff training with Wycliffe Bible Translators. Technically they work for JAARS – in the aviation part of the ministry.

The Wycliffe USA headquarters are a couple hundred yards from our house. So they came out a day early and hung out with us. It was a lot of fun and our kids were sad to see them go. Hopefully their training schedule wont be too crazy and we will get to hang out again before they return to Arizona.

There has been a ton going on in my life, so much so that I haven’t had much time to get over here and post about any of it. So what is all this stuff?

Well, I made some major headway in the last couple months on a decent sized project I’ve been working on for the Jesus Film Project. I am in the processing of taking their Oracle 9i database running on Windows and moving it to 10g on Linux, while at the same time splitting it into 4 databases, for various functions.

I’ve also finalized all the paperwork and had official approval of my move from ITG to GTO. This is all within Crusade, and in fact I only move physically a few cubicle rows over. But for me it means a huge shift in what I do at work. Well- huge but still IT related. Instead of being a full time Oracle DBA, I will be doing all kinds of work to support our staff over seas. I will get to play with a lot of Open Source web technologies and I am very, very excited about that.

Then there is the normal life stuff. Family is the biggest of course and I’m very blessed to have a beautiful wife and kids at home. As the children grow it is awesome to see themselves become more and more their own person. Very neat.

I’ll have more details on the stuff above soon.

We just got back into Orlando today. We spent the last week in the Tampa area – Treasure Island to be exact. It was a nice, relaxing time which was just what we needed.

We spent a lot of time at the beach and the pool, took in a Rays game, visited the Florida aquarium and played a few games of Trouble. The kids took in some Disney channel, enjoying the fact that they had cable where we stayed. Ingrid and I each got to read a fluff novel, and I got to work through most of a really great book on intellectual property. Sounds boring but it really wasn’t. I’ll have a review up over at GeekBook pretty soon.

We are very fortunate to get to take the time for something like this. I also think about how nice it is to be so well off that we can just go stay somewhere, take a week off work, etc. Not everybody has that kind of luxury. I’m really thankful.

Next week the is the last of summer vacation for the kids. Then it’s back to school, so hopefully this gave them some nice summer memories. The first third of their vacation was OSP – so I think this kind of balanced it out.

We didn’t have internet access – for a week. And I lived. How about that?

Spent a few hours with the family at Magic Kingdom today. It’s a bit warm out- so the time we were there was just about right. The tickets were given to us, so we didn’t feel pressure to stay all day and make it worth the money. We went straight to Thunder Mountain Railroad and picked up fast passes – then rode Splash Mountain. By the time we did that we were able to get in the fast pass line for Thunder Mountain and rode that. Then the wife and kids did the small world ride while I went to meet up with some friends. We were all meeting in Tomorrow Land so I grabbed fast passes for Buzz Lightyear. We ate lunch, then did Buzz Lightyear. I scored enough for Space Pilot status. My thumb hurt though. After that my wife and oldest rode the people mover while the other two and myself waited in line for the astro orbiter or whatever it is called. Then we needed to get home so the girls could go to the dress rehearsal for tomorrow’s dance recital. They are now at said recital practice, youngest is playing lego starwars II and I’m chilling out – posting to slashdot from the nicely air conditioned confines of my home.

My kids were talking to an adult friend of ours about movies. The kids (ages 8,7,5) proceed to explain that one movie they really like is about “A boy who dates a girl but becomes bad and wants to kill her and her whole family.” Well, we were shocked. We couldn’t for the life of us think of what that could be. We don’t own any movies like that. We wouldn’t let our kids watch something like that. So we asked quickly, “What movie was that?” and they respond, “The Sound of Music.” I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time.