Still alive... and finally inspired!

I know its been close to a month since I posted anything. A number of things have contributed to this. First and foremost, I have been uninspired. Second, I have been pretty busy at work. And last, we have been busy with projects around the house.

However, I finally felt like getting out my camera, the colored pencils, and pens this weekend. Maybe this was because Cathie's mother was in town and seeing her knit inspired me to do something. Also, I think that because Cathie's birthday was on Saturday and I needed to make her a card helped with my inspiration.

Whatever it was, it felt good. And I think what made me feel the best was that we were able to REALLY clean our house this weekend.

Living Room

Living Room

Reading Room, a.k.a. the middle room

Reading Room, a.k.a. the middle room

Kitchen

Kitchen

Our list of projects for the next few months is pretty aggressive. We hope to build "built-ins" on either side of the fireplace, paint all of the ceilings, and get the hardwood floors refinished.

Photo Friday: Sentimental

Photo Friday: Sentimental
Originally uploaded by louhamilton23.

Cathie's grandfather gave this to her when she was a little girl. It has TONS of sentimental value to her.

Since the core of the body is plywood, the head broke at the neck. She was very upset about this and was thrilled when I has able to fix it.

What are people thinking?

I was just on another blog and he was talking about penny stocks arriving in his e-mail as spam and who would ever take these offers. This made me think of all the stupid, waste of time e-mails I get in a day. I'm glad most of them get filtered into my Junk Mail folder.

I cannot stand these people who forward e-mails about the war, pictures that are "too good to be true," poems that need to be forwarded, and god knows what other crap I choose not to read.

Most of these e-mails can be proven to be false just by going to one website, www.snopes.com. Just do a quick search on the subject of the e-mail or a phrase in the e-mail and you will most likely find it to be completely false.

A recent e-mail I got showed a soldier with a black patch on his shoulder which says, "Doing the work for" and the flags of Germany, France, and Russia below it. A quick search on "black patch" proved the picture of be false and gave an explanation of where the original, unaltered photo came from.

My other favorite is when I get a poem or feel-good story that needs to be forwarded to 13 people in the next 15 minutes or you will have 7 years of bad luck. I'm sorry, I have never forwarded a damn thing and I have a never had a bit of bad luck. I have a beautiful wife, 2 healthy, handsome sons, an awesome job that I love to go to, and a house in a wonderful town. Where is the bad luck in that life?

My frustration come from thinking about these things too much. What kind of person creates this kind of fictitious information and puts it out in the Internet? I guess more importantly, why do people believe this and forward the e-mails along to others? Do people actually read these fucking e-mails before they forward them along? Do they actually believe in this shit? Again, what are people thinking? And then there is my favorite situation -- when you hear someone talking about these e-mail topics in public as if they heard it on CNN or some other national news program the night before. This actually was a conversation I heard where they were talking about a flight formation at an Air Force Base. I had seen the e-mail a few months before and knew that the photo was altered by Photoshop. Idiots!

Working in the IT field, I guess you can say I have the inside edge. This crap is polluting our Internet. It is preying on the naive. And most of all IT IS REALLY PISSING ME OFF!

On a better note, our weather finally has changed for the better. We will be getting into the 60's the next few days and hopefully stay this way for the remainder of the season. Anybody have any exciting plans for this summer?

My new toy

I know that I haven't been around much. Not dead, just busy.

Since I will be working from home more, I felt it was worth upgrading my home office. The upgrade that I decided to get was a new monitor.

When I worked from home in the past, I just plopped my laptop on my desk and did my work. It worked all right for me, but I wanted some additional desk space to spread out on.

This is what my desk looked like before the new monitor. (My old 15" CRT monitor was shoved below the desk for when I had to view my network server in order to fix any of my shares or print jobs.)

After doing a lot of research, the Samsung 22" monitor was best in its class. Additionally, it was on sale at Circuit City online. Therefore, I had to get it since the sale price was in my budget.

This is the box after bringing it home.

Yup. That's 22 inches of LCD flat screen, baby! It also has a 2ms refresh rate and 3000:1 contrast. The color and clarity of the 1680x1050 native resolution it awesome!

Nice packaging. Very clean and not over done.

Everything looks to be there.

And finally. This is what it looked like after everything was set up. I'm loving it!

I broke out my old 2-port KVM switch so I can use this monitor on both my network server and my work laptop when it is on its port replicator. (Anyone want to buy a Linksys 4-port KVM switch with cables? Let me know.)

Now, I just need to clean up and do some cable management then the work space will be perfect.

Last couple of days

This is what our Sunday looked like in front of our house. The snow came down so quickly that by the time I had a path shoveled, the walkway behind me was already covered. There were not too many people out on the road. This was a good thing because I'm not sure a snow plow was down our road until the afternoon.

If you are interested, more pictures of the storm can be seen at my Flickr account.

Today, Cathie and I were sitting eating lunch at the kitchen table when we heard some birds screeching outside. I went out to investigate and saw some birds in the trees fighting and yelling at each other.

I went back inside and got my camera. Since we have a second floor porch, I went out there to see if I could get some good pictures. This was the best one I could get. I am not sure if he was the instigator or not, but there were also blue jays and another bird that resembled a Flicker (Real long beak) flying at each other.

Our Personal Frozen Tundra

This is our backyard. It is completely frozen solid. I spent over 15 minutes with a garden pick trying to chop the ice so we had a pathway to our cars. I never made it deep enough to reach our cement patio pad. I only made it about 3 inches deep and still have another 2 or 3 inches to go. I also only made it about 10 feet out of about 80 or so feet. Instead, I gave up and decided to take a few pictures of items around the yard frozen in place.


This is a Fisher Price bicycle that my boys parked near the swing set. As you can see, it is not going anywhere for a while.


This soccer ball was under the swing set. Now, it only peeks out of it snow prison waiting for spring to come and have someone play with it again.


Here is the bicycle from above as well as another bike.

Today, it reached 40 degrees. I thought a lot of the ice would melt. Unfortunately, next to nothing melted.

Frederick, Maryland on the Rocks

I finally decided to dig out my car yesterday since I had to go get rations for the family unit from the store. The first thing I noticed after our snow/sleet/freezing rain event was that my 180 lb. frame was not sinking in the "snow." Instead, I have a nice ice rink in my back yard. Feeling how hard the surface was, I knew I was in for a big task getting the car out at this point.

When I got to my car, I noticed that it had about 5 inches of an ice mixture stuck to it. Notice there are no foot indentations going to my door and the accumulation is up to my rims. The above picture was taken AFTER I walked around the car, "scraping" the ice off the roof, trunk, windows, and hood.

Now that the car was cleared off, it was now time to get it unstuck. I initially attempted to just put the car in gear and "rock" the car out of its resting place. This was a technique learned during the winters in Erie, PA. This was unsuccessful. Instead, it drew the attention of a neighbor kid who was willing to help. My first thought was that this kid would slip and fall on the ice as I was backing up. It turned out okay and there were no casualties.

Finally, after the neighbor kid and I dug out my front tires, I got the car moved. To my surprise, the car did not make deep tracks in the snow as I reversed out of my parking space. Instead, it drove ON TOP of the snow. My 1999 Honda Accord was sitting on the snow and not sinking in it. We were both amazed and had never seen such a sight. In my 20 some winters up north, I had never experienced anything of this nature. WOW!

This last picture just shows the tire resting on the snow with no indentations surrounding it.

I'm still in awe of this. Can you tell?

Celebrating the number 100

Friday was a special celebration for my son at school. It was the 100th day of the school year.

This post is a special marker for me since it is my 100th post on this blog.

So, in celebration of these two events, I thought that I would post some art my son did at school on Friday. His hat has 10 circles and each circle has 10 unique items drawn in them.

Today is also my half way point in the computer programming class that I am taking. I finished my mid-term last night. My brain is mush today from psuedocodes and structure charts and flow charts.

Now we start the week preparing for a possible blizzard moving in Monday and Tuesday. No one is posting accumulation numbers, but let's hope it is not the 100+ inches they saw in New York state this past week. 6-12 inches would do nicely, though. At least the kids would love it!

Duck Colors

Duck -- Humphrey's Half Moon Inn
Originally uploaded by louhamilton23.

These ducks were so tame that you could walk right up to them. I was probably 18 inches or so from them when I took this picture.

I love the color of this male (drake), the green seems to change colors with the angle that you look at him.

The female (duck) has a nice brown color to her, as well. However, it just is not the same boldness as the drakes color.

Pacific Portal at Shelter Island

I know that I haven't posted in a few days but I've been in San Diego for work. Although it was a business trip, I did have a chance to see a few sites. My Flickr account will be updated later this weekend with pictures from the trip.


This is the Pacific Shelter on Shelter Island in Point Loma. It was right across the street from the hotel where I stayed. Pacific Shelter is a sculptural gazebo. It was designed by James Hubbell and constructed for a May 2006 opening celebration. The structure is sprayed concrete with mosaic tile detailing. The adjacent trellis has concrete columns, timber beams and wrought iron ornamentation.

The Art of Relaxation

When it comes to laziness, Nigel has got to be King.

Nigel is the type of cat that will not move from the step he is laying on if you are coming up the stairs. You actually need to step over him. He is not a small cat, so he takes up the entire step. Although, he looks to have lost weight, he is probably still a good 14-15 pounds (down from 18).

In this picture, Nigel probably would not move if you went to the bedroom door and opened it. Instead, he would look up at you annoyed.

Some days, I wish I could just lay around and do nothing but look annoyed at the people around me.

Portable Art Supplies

Portable Art Supplies
Originally uploaded by louhamilton23.

I carry this around with me when I just want a couple pencils, pens and an eraser.

I've had this case for at least 20 years and it is still in great condition..

Illustration Friday -- Red

Today's Illustration Friday topic was Red. This was the first thing that crossed my mind.

Backyard Art

My neighbors
Originally uploaded by louhamilton23.

One of the things I love about living in downtown Frederick are the backyards. The different colors and styles show the individuality of the homeowners as well as the different architectures of the houses.

This shot was taken from my backyard while on the kids fort.

First Snowman of Winter

First snowman of winter
Originally uploaded by louhamilton23.

This is about as much snow as we got. The boys enjoyed making a snowman today.

It consists of hair made out a pine tree limb, arms made from twigs, nose and mouth made from carrots, and eyes, mustache and beard made from Double Chocolate Cookie Crisp cereal.