Someone please pinch me

I think that I walked into a time warp here at work yesterday. I saw something that I have NEVER seen in the entire time that I have spent in the corporate world. I was told by middle management that they were moving out of their offices into cubicles. Not only that but they were doing the moving themselves. I could not believe my eyes or ears. LOL... Usually what happens in the corporate world is that management has an office and everyone else that is considered a working bee or non management gets a cubicle, IF you are lucky enough to get one of those. There was a point in time when an IT professional was considered a professional white collar worker that also got an office of their own. Granted, it was not always a corner office and it was never as nice as what management had but you at least got an office with four walls and a door if you needed to close it so you could concentrate and get your job done or eat lunch in privacy. Those days are gone forever. Today, I sit in a server room with noisy servers and networking gear. So, all in all I still have an office even if it is noisy and cold in here. I can close my door if I want and bang away at the keyboard and problem solve to my hearts content. The only complaint that I have here is that the 6 month contract I am on is for only 20 hours per week. I have been able to justify 20-27 hours a week when I am really busy. I am hopeful that in March that they will love me enough that when the contract is up they will just hire me full time. This would be an awesome place to work. As a contractor you are typically treated like dirt and you usually get all the crap jobs that no one else wants to do. Not all employers treat contractors badly but there are quite a few out there that treat you as sub human. I would love to tell you who my employer is but all I can say is that I contract through TekSystems in Columbia. I will have to keep where I work a secret here on my blog. Did you know that employers read blogs and they can and have used the contents of a persons blog to fire them? So, just as an FYI, if you get an urge to publish your rant about your employer and it is all negative they probably will see it and you could be fired over it.
Heck, as far as that goes, in a "right to work" state like SC they can fire you for parting your hair on the wrong side, wearing the wrong perfume/cologne or picking your nose in the parking lot. So , just imagine what a negative comment on a blog would do for your reputation at the office. Can you say CRASH and BURN?? Oh yeah, while I am thinking about employees and privacy at the office did you know that you do not have any? That is right, especially when it comes to using company owned computer systems and networks. They have the ability to track every single thing that you do on the network. They can and will read your e-mail and find out where you have been surfing on the world wide web. I know because I help to support the systems to make it possible. So, be sure to abide by the computer use policy or whatever it is they call it at your office because they can and will discipline you for breaking the rules. Some things like surfing porn at the office, booking vacations and gambling can get you fired on the spot. Some employers such as the one I support now just block objectionable websites at the proxy server which keeps folks honest.

The house Santa Claus forgot

This morning, Christmas morning, is a sad morning for the munchkins. For years the kids would always be up awaiting my arrival in the living room so that they can begin to open their presents. This year, since there is nothing under the tree from Santa Claus they are both asleep in their beds. The kids do not believe in Santa Claus however we do have a tree and lights and we always pretend that the gifts are from Santa even if they know it is not real. I guess that there is something magical about getting up on Christmas morning and being greeted by all of the pretty presents under the tree. It is sort of like going to church, you expect for the singers to be singing and the preacher to be preaching. Without those things the experience just would not be the same. On Friday night I got together with a friend of mine and shared pizza and Dr Pepper. I told my friend that usually what we do the payday before Christmas is that we say to heck with the bills and we just go to Walmart and buy the childrens Christmas presents and then just suffer the consequences of not having paid specific bills after the holidays. This year the bills were much more plentiful than the funds we had to pay them. Nevertheless we were out of character this year and spent our money on bills and not on Christmas presents. I guess what makes this even worse is that for the last five years our kids have been sponsored by Happy Days and Special Times and Food Lion for Christmas. Therefore our kids really had a nice Christmas each year after Jessica died. This is the first year since Jessica has died that we were supposed to provide Christmas presents for the kids. Luckily for me my 13 year old daughter is taking things in stride while my 10 year old son is not real thrilled about this. I spoke to him about the reality of things and why this year presnets are real sparse. He understands the why but he is still bummed out and I guess I can understand. While I was writing this Katy and the kids got ready to go to Walmart. Apparently Walmart is open today and the kids want to go spend the Christmas money they found in their stockings so they were pretty excited about that. Maybe Christmas wont be a total disaster for the kids after all..

Which way did he go?

With it being Christmas time and all I have been expecting to be visited by Santa and his elves and not the nasty little gremlin that popped in for an unexpected visit yesterday morning. Have you ever invited a friend over to spend the day and eagerly anticipated their arrival and had all sorts of fun things to go do with them? Well, yesterday morning I woke up and found out that my invisible friend had arrived and started wreaking havoc early.
The first evil task that this gremlin did was to mess up my main Gateway system. I sat down with my first cup of java of the day and was greeted by multiple IO errors in most of the applications that tried to run. At first I thought the ram upgrade I had installed a week ago was suspect. I rebooted the system with my trusty PC Check diskette and ran some quick diagnostics on the hardware. The only thing that failed was the SMART functionality on the main hard drive. That could be indicative of the main hard drive going bad. So, off to work I went with my baby in tow in hopes I could troubleshoot its woes in between trouble tickets.
No sooner had I gotten to work I noticed that my gremlin friend had his dirty little claws in the work network. One of the servers needed to be rebooted so that an application called Cribmaster would work again. I had no sooner fixed that problem when one of the engineers came to get me with laptop problems. Once all that was done and the backup tapes were swapped on the server I spent some time on the phone with Gateway tech support convincing them that I was not a stupid end user that did not have a clue. Why is it that tech support people just assume everyone is a blithering idiot when it comes to computers and how to use them? I had to convince them beyond the perponderance of evidence that I indeed had anti virus software running and current and that I had defragged the hard drive and there was no spyware, adware, malware or viruses on my system. I assured them that all that was ailing my baby was an uninvited gremlin that was causing me major headaches today.
With all of that said and done I took advantage of the 53 days left on my parts and service warranty and shipped the system off to Dallas Texas. I was assured I would see my computer again sometime in early January depending on how many systems greeted their tech when it arrived. My gremlin was bored with me at this point and decided to race home ahead of me. When I got home, after shipping the pc I had no sooner gotten settled when Justin announces that he could not get on the Internet with his computer and asked me if my removing the gateway in some way disabled the high speed dsl connection. I told him that it had not and that I would look at it. While I am running ipconfig on his pc Katy comes in the front door and asks me if I would come outside. I thought that was sort of weird but I went outside anyway. Once I get there I am greeted by this 19 year old lady who is our next door neighbor who has accidentally spilled hot liquid down her front and she is 38 weeks pregnant to boot.
I told Katy to help the lady to our couch and I called 911 and had them send out an ambulance. Comes to find out the poor neighbor had second degree burns. The ambulance carted her off to Trident hospital in Summerville and that freed me up to fight the Network gremlins in my house. Once I rebooted the dsl modem and logged it back on to the network and turned on bridging again I was able to connect the kids pc to the Internet via the Motorola wireless router/switch/firewall. Please say a prayer for our neighbor Amanda that she will be ok and not in too much pain.
Once all of that was taken care of I had about 10 min for a power nap and then off to Folly Beach to work security at my favorite fuel depot and watch all the crack heads and drunks buying gas, munchies, beer and smokes. Hey, atleast I get paid to watch the entertainment four hours a night. LOL...
Today, I hope that my life is gremlin free. Maybe he will come visit you??
Merry Christmas...

Quick Prayer Request

Quick prayer request from work....

1. Katy is going to be attending an In Service this weekend and four days after Christmas in Columbia. The in service has to do with her PACE program to get her teaching certificate. She is already teaching in Charleston County, HOWEVER these inservices require homework and lots of studying on her part. She will either get a PASS or FAIL on her work and I do not need to tell you that WE can not afford for her to fail this. No passing grade means no more teaching job. So, the prayer request is for traveling mercies for her and for peace that passes all understanding and a clear mind. I know that she is a bit anxious about all of this just as I would be.

2. I have been speaking with a recruiter for the last two days and the client they have in Columbia is very interested in me. The pay is VERY nice with full benefits. We feel as if we REALLY could use the boost in income since we are SO FAR behind on all of our bills. I would have to travel back and forth from Columbia OR stay there during the week and come home on the weekends. Anyway the prayer request would be that I would have favor in the eyes of this client and can get a face to face interview so I can sell myself. They have already shown preliminary interest in me thus far.
Merry Christmas to one and all!

Tagged

Yes, this IS totally frivolous but fun nevertheless. Since I got "tagged" by a dear friend I decided to go ahead with it.


Seven Things to Do Before I Die (Lord willing):

1.See my children grown and completely in love with the Lord
2. See my church family on fire for God and making a difference in the community I live in
3. See people near to me being healed of depression and other illnesses
4. Ride in a hot air balloon
5. Go to a Dallas Cowboys Football game in real life
6. Go on a cruise with my wife
7. win the lottery and not have to work ever again (lol)

Seven Things I Cannot Do:
1. Deny Christ
2. Stop writing in my blog or short articles/stories
3. allow my car to stay dirty for more than 3 days
4. allow my children to be disrespectful to their mother
5. allow anyone or anything to endanger my family
6. stop Bowling
7. stop taking thousands upon thousands of pictures

Seven Things that Attract Me to My Spouse [romantic interest, best friend, whomever](not necessarily in this order!):
1. Her inner beauty
2. Her faith
3. Her virtue
4. Her honesty
5. Her integrity
6. Her utter selflessness in serving her family
7. Her undying love , devotion and friendship to me

Seven Things I Say (or write!) Most Often:
1.dont get me to lying
2. you have got to be kidding me
3. PLEASE....
4. give me a break
5. if IFS and BUTS were candy and nuts we would have a mighty fine Christmas
6.my daddy used to tell me to poop in one hand and wish in the other and see which one gets the fullest the fastest. (LOL)
7. God bless you

Seven Books (or series) I Love:
1. Bible
2. The Yearling by Majorie Kenneth Rawlings
3. All Zane Grey Novels
4. Technology magazines and books
5. All of Tom Clancys books
6. Dale Brown books
7.Clive Cussler books

Seven Movies I Would Watch Over and Over Again:
1. If I see it more than twice I get bored and go back to the computer (LOL)


Seven People I Want to Join in: (be tagged)

1.Katy Moffitt
2.Jeremy Moffitt
3.Heather Glisson
4.Patty Bennett
5.Troy McNear
6.Chuck Humphrey
7.James Carberry

Grace Fellowship Church Goose Creek

Grace Fellowship Church Goose Creek SC now has an official Internet domain and website.

The Domain URL is as follows.
http://gracefellowshipchurchgoosecreek.com

I have spent some time putting up a basic website with a couple of pages but I am not done yet. I am using Netscape Composer which is a very easy to use HTML editor that allows you to create basic websites. So, with that said be sure to visit often to see what changes I have made. If you are talented in the area of graphics design or web page design and want to donate some time to making our pages look better please let me know. I am good at the basics but once you get past basic html I am lost. Hey, I can't know everything you know. LOL...

Discoveries by Dwight Clough

I subscribe to the Discovery devotionals and would encourage you to do the same. Here is a sample of what Dwight sends out each and every day.



No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made Him known. John 1:18How do you squeeze the universe small enough so you can hold it in your hand? How do you put all the oceans of the world in a single bottle? If it were left up to us to find God, we would be in big trouble. How could we hope to know anything about Him in a year, in 70 years, in 6,000 years? It would be like counting the fish in the Pacific ocean, one by one, hoping we didn't miss any. That's why we learn the truth: No one has ever seen God. Our eyes aren't big enough. Our heart isn't pure enough. Our life isn't enduring enough to see God, unless God wants to be seen.But God wants to be seen. He wants to be known. He wants to fill our little hearts with the knowledge of Him. And He knows you can't pour the ocean into a teacup. So He gives us a drink instead from the Water of Life.What amazes me is how effortless, how automatic, how easy Jesus makes it seem -- every moment of His life was a miracle as He declared to us: This is who God is.God is not at the end of our quest; we are at the end of His quest. We didn't find Him; He found us. One night my son was looking for something. He was getting quite frustrated because he had no idea where it was. My wife walked in the room, and started laughing."What is it? Why are you laughing?" my son wanted to know. But then he started laughing. What he was looking for was right in front of him all the time.So it is with God. Jesus has placed the unknowable right in front of us. God means to be discovered.

Be encouraged!Dwight

http://www.dwightclough.com

Blue Ribbon - pass this on please

I read this and I was reminded of how precious our children are. Not just my children, but YOUR children too. It is so easy for us to turn a blind eye towards the social ills all around us and this is but one. How many times have I come home upset about something at work or frustrated about the bills and lack of money and taken it out on my children? No, I have not gone to these extremes and it is probably only because of Jesus in me. However, there are dads out there and moms too who allow the pressures of this life to drive them to these extremes and their children and spouses become the victims. Needless victims if there are folks that live next door that are aware of the sounds of fighting time and time again. No one wants to get involved because it means it will cause friction between you and the folks involved. God give us the courage to be attentive to the problems around us and help us to be the solution, the hope and light to these people. Please forward this to all the people you know so that they too can be aware of the problem. Thanks



Sarah

My name is Sarah I am but three,My eyes are swollenI cannot see,I must be stupid,I must be bad,What else could have madeMy daddy so mad?

I wish I were better,I wish I weren't ugly,Then maybe my Mommy would still want to hug me.I can't speak at all,I can't do a wrong Or else I'm locked up All the day long.

When I awake I'm all aloneThe house is dark My folks aren't home.When my Mommy does come I'll try and be nice, So maybe I'll get just One whipping tonight.Don't make a sound!I just heard a car My daddy is back>From Charlie's Bar.I hear him curse My name he callsI press myselfAgainst the wall.I try and hide>From his evil eyes I'm so afraid nowI'm starting to cry.He finds me weeping He shouts ugly words,He says its my faultThat he suffers at work.He slaps me and hits meAnd yells at me more,I finally get freeAnd I run for the door.
He's already locked itAnd I start to bawl,He takes me and throws meAgainst the hard wall.

I fall to the floorWith my bones nearly broken,And my daddy continues With more bad words spoken."I'm sorry!", I scream But its now much too late His face has been twisted Into unimaginable hate.The hurt and the pain Again and again Oh please God, have mercy !Oh please let it end!And he finally stops And heads for the door, While I lay there motionless Sprawled on the floor.My name is Sarah And I am but three,Tonight my daddy Murdered me.

How about those Dallas Cowboys??

The Chiefs circled the wagon, set it on fire and tried to run the Cowboys out of town but somehow they managed to turn back the onslaught and beat the Chiefs at their own game. Dallas won the game by 3 points and are STILL in second place in the NFC East. The NY Giants won tonight which means they remain in the first place in the NFC East and Dallas stays in second place. That IS good news since we are getting down to the wire with only four games remaining. Go Cowboys!!

MERRY CHRISTmas

No, not Happy Holidays BUT Merry CHRISTmas... I just read an article in the Post and Courier where a politician sent out 15000 "Happy Holiday" cards. Cough....
I guess you could say that I am a tiny bit passionate about my faith. I keep hearing that WE are to be TOLERANT of each others belief system. I do not have a problem with that. You can worship your dog if you so chose to but do NOT tell me that I can not say MERRY Christmas. That is just pure insanity. Why in the world are we no longer saying Merry Christmas? Why do we have to say Happy Holidays in order to be politically correct? Yes, evangelical Christians chose to celebrate the birth of our savior Jesus Christ during the December month but that does not mean that Jesus was born in December. That also does not mean that we do not worship Jesus 365 days per year with or without a HOLIDAY tree , ornaments or different colored lights. It is a holiday season that the western world has chosen to celebrate and if I want to say Merry Christmas and place emphasis on the CHRIST in the word then I will do so without worrying about offending someone else's belief system.
Just last night while I was working a security detail at Piggly Wiggly I listened to a man who said that he was offended by the need for armed security at the gas depot. He went on and on about how our presence and need for having security just offended his sensibilities because he was a law abiding citizen and owned property where the store happened to be. After listening to the man go on and on for about 10 minutes about how he felt about security being there I just told him "Merry Christmas". He looked at me as if he could not believe what I said. He asked me what I said and I said " I said have a Merry Christmas sir". When the man left one of the clerks told me "oh he is probably Jewish" which means that I offended him by saying Merry Christmas.

damage to vehicle 

damage to vehicle 

damage to vehicle 

damage to car 

Frosty the snowman 

check out the cool snow globe sitting on front lawn of my friend Patty.  

Snow Globe at my friend Patty's house 

One acrobot helping another up to top of my pc 

another view of acrobots 

Acrobots on my pc at home 

Sudden Impact

All things come to an eventual end. My good luck with regards to not having had an automobile accident came to an end this afternoon around 12:55 when someone rammed my car from behind. I was sitting at a red light behind someone in a Jeep Cherokee minding my own business hoping the light would change so I could get to the local sports bar in Goose Creek for the kickoff of the Dallas Cowgirls and the NY Giants. So, as normal the light goes from red to green and off we go. That is until the Jeep in front of me stops suddenly. I managed to get stopped without hitting the person in front of me UNTIL a person behind me decided to not use their brakes and just ran slap into me. The next thing I know the front of my Pontiac is UNDER the back end of the Jeep Cherokee. The driver of the Honda behind me that rammed me from behind did not have their seat belt on and wound up making contact with the windshield with their forehead. I think that the poor chap probably wound up with a concusion and maybe even some neck trauma. I am a bit sore but none the worse for wear at this point. My poor car however is going to need both a nose job and rear end job. LOL... I will probably be driving a rental car for a while once the claims adjuster sets up the direct billing so I can get one tomorrow. Whatever you do, dont have a wreck between 5pm on Friday and 8 am on Monday or be sure you have 200.00 free on your credit card to secure a rental car.
Well, anyway, I know things could have been worse, much worse, however this fellow running into my car , that I JUST washed, was totally uncalled for. LOL... To add insult to injury the Cowgirls looked so pathetic this afternoon. OH MY GOSH, they sucked.

Mystery solved

I am happy to say that the mystery of our surprise visitor has been solved. After much careful consideration and examination of the evidence in front of us Katy and I came to the unanimous conclusion that the person who broke the table must have been one of our very own elfkins. Sure enough after a light hearted conversation with the Justin unit it was verified that he had indeed crawled through the window and accidentally broke the table on his way to the floor. Apparently the door key that he once had has been swallowed up in the same black hole where all my socks go and so he has no other altnerative than to crawl through the window. This weekend I will have to get him a new key because the window access has been blocked off. So, that concludes this tale, case solved.

The victim in todays surprise visit... 

Why use a chimney when you can go through a window?

I suppose that when St Nick could not find a chimney today he decided to use the window on our front porch to gain access to our home. Sometime between 10 am and 4 pm today St Nick came for a visit. I know that it had to be St Nick or one of his elves because anyone else other than Santa and his reindeer would have either left presents or eaten all the milk and cookies that they could find. But wait, it occurs to me that it is a little bit too early for a visit from our hefty friend, isnt it ? Maybe the elves were astounded that our children had not written their annual letter to Kris Kringle and wondered if it was possible that we just had all the toys and goodies that any normal 10 and 13 year old could ever want and decided to come take inventory for themselves. Whomever it was came in through the front window on the porch and exited out the back door onto the back porch. Before they left they misjudged how much weight the antique table sitting by the front window could withstand and therefore managed to splinter one of the legs. On a positive note this table was passed down to Katy by her grandmother and has survived the last 16+ years without being damaged. On a negative note that track record came to a horrible end today. Nevertheless I think we can fix it with some wood glue and a vise to hold it together while it dries.

We have lived in this particular domicile now for almost 5 years. Up until this point I had not really worried about unwelcomed visitors crawling through my front window. I guess that you could say that I had gotten somewhat complacent about security issues around the house. No, I do not leave the doors hanging wide open and I do lock them when we leave. However, I did fail to put a piece of wood between the window and window pane to keep someone from sliding the window open and hopping in. On occasion my children have either forgotten or lost their house key and were able to use that window to gain entry to our house thus not having to stay out on the porch for hours on end waiting for one of the parental units to show up with shiny house keys. I guess those days are over because we are no longer in Kansas. I am thankful that our redneck security alarm was alive and breathing because that might be the reason that the surprise visitors left without stealing anything. Our four year old lab , Angel, probably heard the person or persons breaking the antique table and came running out of Kristina's room barking her furry head off which probably scared our visitors out the back door. GOOD dog!!! This time the redneck alarm system saved our toys. Next time I might not be so lucky. Now there is a nice thick wooden stick between the window and the window pane keeping the honest folks outside wondering if they will attract any attention by busting out the glass. Crime is a crime of opportunity and I should know this after 13 years of law enforcement and security experience under my belt. Open window with no lock gets the attention of someone snooping and they decide to pay a visit to see what kind of goodies are within.

In the first couple of years that we lived here at the bottom of the hill , past the old oak tree and end of state maintenance sign we had two surveillance cameras and a security alarm. When we moved to Simpsonville we had it shipped to us by the security installer who managed to break most of the equipment during the uninstallation or shipping or both. So, when we moved back in 9 months later we did not have the security system to put back in nor did we have the money to have another one put in therefore we have been living without one. Today was a glaring reminder to me of WHY it is good to have a security alarm in place that way when someone opens a window, breaks glass or otherwise trespasses on your property without your bidding they set off an ugly sounding siren and the police or summoned to check on your property. When a thief sees that you are adequately protected they usually pick a easier target to prey upon. I guess today we looked like a Thanksgiving Turkey begging to be violated. That is how you feel when you know someone has been in your home uninvited. You feel violated.

On the bright side, no one was home, the kids were at school and Katy was at work. I would have hated it if one of them would have surprised this person or persons and wound up getting hurt. What would I have done then?? I would have been very regretful for not thinking to block the easiest entrance to our home other than the front and back door.

Jackson the one year old puppy. NOT.... He is a horse. LOL 

another deck shot 

group shot of folks talking on deck 

Justin trying to hide from the shutterbug 

hey, your taking a picture of me taking a picture of you.... 

who is this guy ?? LOL 

Chip standing on porch 

close up of placemats on main dining room table 

Debby slaving away in kitchen.... 

Katy watching Debby cooking in kitchen 

Charlie standing next to his ship on porch 

Debby making some more mashed taters in kitchen 

Murray, Debby's dog, having a snack in the kitchen 

picture of main dining room with mural painted on the wall