Techno Papa

My day started out at 6 am this morning after going to bed around 1:45 am. Yesterday was to be my first day off in 2 weeks and lo and behold if the darn cell phone did not jingle around 3:30 pm with "basset hound" asking me if I would go to the Piggly Wiggly on James Island and work the 5 to midnight shift. I asked him to PLEASE find someone else but if he could not call me and I would work it. Guess what, one hour later the phone rings again and I worked the PIG.
I got to work this morning at 7 am and have been here since then. It is now 6 pm and I have until 12:30 am before I can go home. That will make for 17.5 hours today. I am sure I could have found something better to do but we need the cash so I figured I better suck it up and do what I can when I can.
I looked at the MUSC website and see they have three openings for a Security Specialist III. The pay is much better than what I make at US Security and there are wonderful benefits. I would be inside the hospital at MUSC which will be nice. The person that interviewed me the first time told me he was impressed with the interview and wants me to apply for the next openings which I have. So, I am hopeful that he will call me in for the next step and maybe even just hire me. JUST DO IT!!! LOL... Last week I sent out 8 applications for the state of SC. Seven of the eight were for I.T. positions within different depts for the state and one was for a security position but it was grant funded which means it probably wont be around forever. The dept of corrections is the only dept thus far that has responded to my state application so who knows where that might lead me.
On a positive note Katy will be starting back to work as a full time teacher (not a sub this time YES!!) and her regular paychecks will start coming in sometime in August which will be a HUGE boost to our budget. Ok, whatever, what budget?? LOL... We are just in survival mode at the moment, have been for the last 4 years it seems. Instead of a budget I need to call it my debt list. It is amazing to me we even have a roof over our head or a car to drive. If it were not for our God sent angels of mercy that is exactly where we would be, on the street somewhere.
I just found out today that my son Jeremy moved from Wharton Texas to Michigan where his mother and step dad moved to not too long ago. According to Jeremy's blog he had an operation done on his big toes on his feet. The pictures make me cringe with pain. OUCH....
My friend Heather just made it back from her mission trip to Lima Peru. Heather was gone for 8 days and I am looking forward to looking at the pictures and hearing the stories that are sure to follow.
As you know I posted some pictures of the Arthur Ravenel Bridge and for the last several weeks that has been the big story. I am ready for that story to be over and luckily it seems to have died down to a dull roar for now. LOL... I have been following another story that has been distressing to Katy and I. The story has to do with Happy Days and Special Times here in Charleston and the director Debby Stephenson. It seems that over the years the organization has grown to large for her and her husband to manage. Now there are some accusations flying around about funds not being handled correctly. The board of directors has removed any ability Debbie has to make any decisions and apparently are getting ready to ask her to leave the organization completely. The problem with that is that Debbie aka Flash has been the heart and soul of this organization. HDST would not be what it is without Debbie's persona behind it. If Debbie is forced out will she continue her efforts outside of HDST in another organization? What will happen to HDST? My hope and prayer is that the spirit of the mission of HDST which is to minister happiness in the lives of children who have cancer. I hope that the organization can recover from this huge bump in the road and put in place the accountability and responsible money management in place so that the funds can still be donated to keep the mission alive. Our hearts go out to Debbie and Charlie and are eternally grateful to all of their efforts over the years as they have touched the hearts and lives of parents and children who are living through the consequences of cancer treatment.
Did you see the topic yet? That is right, you can now call me "Techno Papa". The other day Katy and I were in the car and she dubbed me that and I think it stuck. LOL...
James Moffitt
jcmoffitt.blogspot.com
moffittj@bellsouth.net

How HOT will it get folks?

I spent the day down at the Charleston County office building running an xray machine checking folks purses, baggage, and brief cases for weapons. How much fun can that be? It rates just above watching grass grow folks. LOL... The important thing is I have a job no matter if I like it or not. There certainly ARE worse jobs to have. For instance, the temperatures got up to 122 (heat index) today in parts of the low country and I spent 9.5 hours in the 73 degree interior of this building. How nice was that ? I certainly could appreciate my situation and am very thankful I am not on some road crew or construction site sweating my brains out doing manual labor. Amen ??
For now it looks like I will be working days during the week with Friday's off and will still work the weekends which will equate to around 60 hours per week. I will be ALMOST making the same amount of money doing this job at 60 hours per week vs only working 40 hours on my computer job. Oh well, we owe , we owe, off to work I go.
Katy got a call today from the principal where she got hired and told her that she could feel free to come check out her new classroom and start to fix it up like she wanted to. Katy was pretty excited about that and found out that she will be going to orientation next Tuesday with the other newly hired teachers. Katy also found out that she will be getting more money than anticipated thanks to a raise that was approved for Charleston County teachers.
Have you checked out Google Earth yet? If not you are in for a treat. However you are going to NEED a very FAST computer and TONS of resources to be successful running it. I am currently running it on a 1.4 GHZ machine with 512 mb of RAM and a 32mb video card. I found out you can run Google Earth in DirectX mode or Opengl mode. I decided to run Google Earth in DirectX mode and it ran fine for several minutes and then for some unexplained reason my video kicked into 640x480 video mode. I rebooted the system and everything went back to normal so who knows, maybe a bug... Anyway you can search for addresses , locations etc and see a three dimensional photo of the location you want to look at. There is a 10mb download and you have to install the application to access their server.
Take care and sweet dreams.

Awesome picture of more fireworks over new bridge 

cool picture of bridge with it lit up. 

picture of bridge during sunset 

more cool pictures of fireworks 

more fireworks pictures 

Fireworks over the new bridge 

picture of boats in Charleston Harbor getting ready for fireworks 

Not sure when this picture was taken... Cool shot though 

Arthur Ravenel Bridge lit up during fireworks display. Someone else took these pictures and I got them through email this evening and wanted to share them with you