Saturday was quite the day out in the country. We had a decent amount of snow along with gusts of winds up to 50 mph coming out of the West (which means that it drifts across our lane). About half the lane was covered in 3 feet of snow before the wind changed directions and blew from the North. Luckily, it did not snow us in although I had a scarey moment driving to town. I let my truck get low on gas so as the weather worsened, I decided I'd better go fill up. Right in front of the Douglas's place, my visibility suddenly dropped to 0. Not good when you are moving along at 40 MPH. I quickl slowed down and prayed that there wasn't a car coming from the other direction (which there wasn't) because for about 5 seconds, I couldn't see anything.

So, basically Saturday was a stay in the house day for everyone including the dogs. Except for being bored, we had a good day.. about about 11:40 (about 10 minutes after I went to bed) I heard a lot of commotion coming from the living room.

I got up to go yell at the dogs where were undoubtedly getting into something and found JD having a seizure on the floor. I moved everything away from him (he was literally kicking over chairs and rolling on the floor) and waited for him to come out of it. I have observed dogs in convulsions before but this was much stronger. At one point, his back was arched the wrong way and he was almost standing on his back legs against the wall. He was very freaked out and trying to walk, but nothing was working, so he flopped around like a fish out of water.

Even though the seizure only last a few seconds, the after affects lasted about 1 1/2 hours, which included him almost strangling himself with a cord and throwing himself against the walls and onto his side.

The worse thing is that coming from a day of snow storms, I didn't know if I could get out at that point to get him to the vet. So, I felt a bit trapped.

I called the Animal Emergency Center (the third time in as many months) and told them what he was doing. It made me feel good when they said,. "Was this the same dog that came in last month from rat poisoning?".. "yep.. that's him."

The good news is that I was able to get out in my truck, although loading and unloading a convulsing dog in the back seat of a 2 door pick-up is not fun. They immediately gave him some valium when we arrived and kept him until 2 PM the next day (remember, I dropped him off about 1 AM) and said that he didn't have any more seizures there.

Unfortunately, they don't know what casued it. 2 is about the time that epilepsy can show up in a dog, so that is a likely cause. :(

Sunday's weather was great and the kids and I played outside with Lefty and they rode the 4 wheeler around in the snow until they got too cold.

Mom got DSL, so I installed that for her today. Hopefully, that will help her remain in better contact with the rest of the world.

I guess now that we are spending every waking moment working on the house, I don't have as much to report weekly. But! There are some neat things going on.

First of all.. let me say Congrats to William on his new promotion!

Things are really settling back at Wolfram and at times, I easily forget that I left. So many of the reports that I made 2+ years ago are still being used daily. One of my first tasks is going to be getting a handle on the times to refresh these reports. They all run nightly so that the user can simply view the static html page. Some reports do run quickly, but others take 30 minutes+. And, now that there is a lot more data in the system then 2 years ago, the problem has really compounded.

Fortunately at the time, but unfortunately now..I created most of these "under the radar". At the time, it was the only way to get the project going. But now, things that I built as temporary have become solid business models, which makes updating/fixing things very diificult. Oh well.. :)

For our 10th wedding anniversary in 2 weeks, Holly and I will be going to Galena, IL. It is a very charming community in NW Illinois. Bridget and Broderick will be staying with my eldest brother Trent in Rockford. We are all very excited!!

AND!! Amber (my eldest sister) is turning 50 this year. As a present to herself, she is taking the family on a cruise to the bahamas over spring break! I can't wait. The kids have been wanting to fly for ages and none of us have been on a cruise before. We'll leave out of Miami on Carnival, sail to Key West, then head to some Mexican town before returning to Miami.

On Saturday, we took the kids over to the Decatur Chiildren's Museum, which was a lot of fun. I highly recommend to anyone with kids from 5-14 who have interests in science.

Sunday was a lazy day... I did get the backboard put down in the bathroom closet and soaked on the hot tub. Also fighting a bit of a cold. :(

We closed on our last loan last week, which is great. Gives us a decent rate and pays off all of our debts + cash out to finish projects up.

Day 2 at Wolfram and I am knee deep into the swing of things. Amazing of how much of the stuff I wrote 2-3 years ago as a side pet project has become core parts of business. This is a good and bad thing.

Good because it really gives people information that they want/need about various aspects of business, but bad as I didn't spend the time to really make things efficient. Also, as people have been using Oracle more and more... (especially through a lot of the web interfaces I wrote) the data has literally quadrupled over the last 1 1/2 yrs. Reports which used to run in 5 minutes can now take 2-3 hours as they are chugging through massive amounts of data.

So.. one of my first jobs is going to be trying to figure out which reports people are using and which aren't and then make those being used more efficient.

I am really looking forward to the challenge. Through HK and LRS, I've learned so much since I left here that I can really attack these problems from an entirely fresh angle.

Now.. if only I had CF here... I think William said it does runs with Apache.. so I'll have to check that out. Something that would take me 5 minutes to do in CF will be much harded with Perl or ASP as I have to relearn those languages... sigh.

I've been very good about going to the Gym... I hope I can keep up the effort. It helps not having to come into work until 9 AM. :)

Our home internet has been down the last several days due to the ice storm. I guess the ice collecting on the antennae causes some problems.. It finally came back up Sunday night, but that's why I ahven't blogged in awhile.

Last week was my last week at HK. It was busy and I didn't get everything done that I wanted to... which was much better then having tons of free time on my hands. On Friday afternoon, we had a decompression meeting from the HK site project (the site is now live... www.humankinetics.com) which was really good. I hope they take some of the things that were brought up and try to fix them for future projects.

This weekend was nice.. On Sat, we went to my Sister Amber's in Springfield. On Sunday, I got sooo bored. I ended up cleaning up the shed, taking down the x-mas lights from the roof, picking up the toys in the play yard, packing up scrap metal (including bikes and lawn mower) which i took to the recycling center today.. and I still got bored. Not used to not working on the house I guess (and with no internet).

Today is my first day at Wolfram. I am getting a hand-me down laptop which I am not thrilled at, but hopefully it is not too slow. My temporary computer is a 700 mhz machine with a really loud fan.. (yech!) But.. I only have to use it for 1 week. I got to choose between a couple of different locations.. which was really nice, but it meant that nothing was set-up. No biggy!

We are trying to decide where to go on vacation this summer.. or stay at home and get a pool for the yard. Any advice? :)

Well.. only 3 more days left at HK. This week has been nicely busy, especially compared with last week. I have a lot of documenting to get done and some last minute tasks.. but it will get done.

I started working out at the Fitness Center again yesterday.. feels good. Yesterday I did cardio and today I lifted upper body... Hmmmm... if I was a bit more geeky, I'd get a palm pilot to record what I've done and synch with a db... good thing I am not quite that geeky.. (OK.. I am, but I don't have a palm).

I went home and soaked in the hot tub over lunch today... kinda weird to be out during the day.. but it was very relaxing. :)

The News-Gazette Online - New Laws of 2005

Good thing this one wasn't around when I was in High School

: "A new law makes it illegal for any driver to knowingly use an incline such as a railroad crossing, bridge approach or hill to cause their vehicle to become airborne. If a person is unintentionally killed as a result of those actions, the driver would be eligible for reckless homicide charges."

I've had a lot of people ask to see before and after floorplans of our house. Especially those who have only seen the "after". Holly and I are going to go back and try to create a project timeline.

Barnhart Farm House Remodel Project

Also, if I created a more general history of the house.
Barnhart Farm House History.

After reading Carrie's blog, I got the idea of writing a recap of 2004.. man there has been so many changes.

At the start of 2004, I was working at Levi, Ray, and Shoup as a salesman traveling 2-3 days a week all over the US in a private jet. We had a newer (built in the 70s) home in Springfield, IL near the lake with a nice above ground pool. In a lot of ways, the entire thing was a good situation. Having a newer home in town, meant that I didn't have so many distractions. Instead of spending my free time mowing, or working outside, I spent it with the family. Going to Parks, visiting Amber, etc, etc. But, the travel was very hard on the family as well. Broderick started to act out more towards Holly and things were more stressful when I wasn't around. At the same time, we found we were really missing the Champaign area, so I looked into moving back to town.

LRS gave me permission to work out of the house and come back to LRS 1-2/times a week.. but by that time, I found a job as a Project Manager at Human Kinetics.

Over the winter, propane had run out at the farm and several water pipes broke (actually, as I fixed the leaks, I found something like 6-7 breaks).. This collapsed a big part of the living room ceiling and flooded the basement with 2-3 feet of water.. a big mess. So initially, we looked into buying a house instead of moving back to the farm house.

We found a cute place in Sidney on a corner lot. Not a huge place, but comfortable. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the house inspection turned up a lot, including a sewer that was just dumping into a lot behind the house. The owner refused to fix the problem, so we got out of the contract.

That led us to decide to remodel the farm house. Of course, at that time, we had no idea how hude the project really would be, but now that we are on the tail-end of it, I am so happy that we decided to go this route. The kids love it out in the country and we have lots of room.

This summer, we decided to finally get a horse, Lefty. It was supposed to be Bridget's pony, but I think I have taken him over. :) This next summer, we'll enlarge our herd and get at least another horse and maybe a couple more horses. It's hard for Bridget to just go out and ride by herself, and I am the only one comfortable enough just to hop on him.

We've had our share of animal problems this year. Sam got hit by a car which required surgery that included removing part of his liver. Later JD just a nasty cut on his riight hip which required stitches and not much later, but Sam and JD got into rat poison, which just about killed both of them. Suki is looking very old right now and has a hard time getting up and down the stairs.

Bridget and Broderick are both doing well. Most days they play together very nicely and often miss the other when they aren't there. They are both very smart kids and good readers. Broderick especially has a good mind for grasping theoretical things. Bridget loves science and reading. Even though she doesn't particularly like it, she is good at math. She tested for Unity's gifted program this year, but didn't make it. They only tested 4 kids in her class... so even that was a big honor.

Bridget loves horses (of course) including pegasus and unicorns. She also likes American Girl dolls and coloring/painting.

Broderick still loves farming and played his John Deere American Farmer game. He also really enjoys trains, cars, big rigs, and just about anything that moves or has wheels.

Holly has really thrown herself into working on the house... redesigning everything. She decided to stop going to school for her interior design degree. She found that she didn't enjoy the classes and found that she didn't want to do that sort of thing full time. The house now has a shop built in for her and she still has some regular customers. Once the house is finished, I suspect that she'll work on picking up business.

This summer, we went to Fripp Island, SC, although the family did not come with us, which was kinda strange, but also nice.

The family has been mostly healthy this year and I really can't complain! I hope 2005 let's us finish the house and find the time to enjoy life more!

Glen sent this picture of himself, Alex, and Me at the Office 2 in Champaign. This is from last Sunday when they were in town. It was a lot of fun seeing them (although, I was dog tired the next morning).