A joke for you

I thought this one was particularly funny so I would share it with you....

This very blonde young woman decided she was tired of all the "blonde" jokes so she went to her favorite beauty parlor and had her hair colored.... bright red!

As she drove home through the country afterwards, she spied a shepherd standing alongside the roadway - tending his sheep.

She stopped and watched the peaceful animals grazing for a while and chatted politely with the shepherd. After some time, she looked over at him and said "Hey, I got a challenge for you - if I tell you exactly how many sheep are in that field, you give me one.... ok?"

The shepherd thought about it a minute (there were a lot of sheep in the field) and he said "sure - go ahead and give it a try"

The woman quickly replied "There are 258 sheep!"

Astonished, the shepherd replied "You are absolutely right! Well, a deal's a deal - go pick out your sheep".

The young woman looked over the sheep for a moment or two and then strode out into the field to collect her reward.

As she walked back to her car prize in hand, the shepherd said "Hey lady, I got a challenge for you....."

"I'll tell you what your natural hair color is and if I get it right.....


you give me back my dog!"

;o)

Now THAT's funny!

Keep smiling - Jerry

Officially smart person

Well, tonight was the night. We went to the high school and watched Leah be inducted into the National Honor Society. We were so very happy for her and proud of her for her accomplishment. Each of the current members of the NHS came forward and introduced two of the new members for this year. Leah sat toward the front - second row, on the right - far end.

At the appointed time, they announced her contributions to the school in terms of Wind Symphony, Marching Band and the school pride award she received a couple of months ago for her work at the school (Leah tutors other students in English each day). Leah marched across the stage, signed the log book, and lit her candle in the centerpiece (there were four candles on the center table that stand for: Service, Scholarship, Character and Leadership plus the one candle (in the center) used by each new inductee to light their own. Parents were asked to stand as "their" student was announced and we were happy to do so when Leah was announced. I sent pictures (screen captures) to all the family Ceiva's tonight so our extended family could see some of the proceedings. When I have time, I will edit the proceedings into a video DVD.

A reception was held in the cafeteria. We decided to leave shortly after so we could celebrate with Leah in a private dinner (Olive Garden - her second choice because Fudd's won first place - but sadly was closed by the time we got there). As we were walking out of the building, Leah smiled and laughed and said ... "now I am officially smart!" (as she pinned her NHS pin to her blouse. ;o)

It was an enjoyable evening. Wish you could have been there. Hope you get to see the pictures soon. I'll try to get them up on the web site too.

Best regards,

Jerry

Leah Inducted

One last thought for tonight....

I forgot to mention that Leah will be inducted into the National Honor Society tomorrow! That's quite an honor and she has worked hard to earn it. We are proud of her for her accomplishment.

Take care - Jerry

The Fog....

An odd weather thing happened today - during the night last night, a dense fog set into our area. Apparently, while the fog was coating most everything in sight, the temperature dropped down below freezing. The result was that the trees, shrubs and other stuff ended up coated in ice! It was beautiful this morning. Each delicate branch was coated in ice and it looked like a fairy land with all the trees glowing in the early morning sun. It was truly a unique sight. I took some pictures and posted them on our family web page. Check them out!

It's been a good weekend and believe it or not, tonight I finally got our Christmas tree out the door (whether it needed it or not!). Come to think of it, it needed it. It wasn't the dryest one I have ever thrown away but it was getting there; not quite a cactus yet but not suitable for turning the lights on (unless you actually like flambe de Christmas tree) I do not prefer indoor fires unless they are actually "inside" the fireplace. So, sadly, another Christmas period is officially over because the tree has hit the curb. We still have remaining Xmas type items to put away but at least the urgent one has been dealt with.

I'm teaching the adult bible class at Church this semester and we are studying the life of Christ in chronological order. It's a fair amount of work in that I put some 5-8 hours each week into the preparation including slides, notes, and hand-outs. The class is a popular study and I am learning a lot (as teachers always do when trying to teach their students). We are just getting to the birth of Christ after talking about the gospels, their intended audiences, the prophesies and the birth of John. Next week we talk a bit about Herod (one bad dude).

I was thinking about my kiddo's a lot today. We have lots of little ones at Church these days. They range in age from a couple of months up to 11. There are a few after that in the teen years too. Seeing them run about and act so happy made me think of my own children and how precious they are to me and how much I miss those days when they were little.

I talked to Sam for quiet a while tonight - Sam's 10. He talked about how much he enjoys reading, his pizza party on Friday (coming), his gym class, his ice cream party on Friday too (for reading a certain number of books) and etc. He's quite the pleasant and talkative little fellow and he's quite bright. He reminded me of Mark when Mark was the same age - many lifetimes ago....

I guess life has a cruel aspect to it in that you never can really fully appreciate the gift that your children are to you while they are little and living at home. Oh I know we love them and we care about them but we are so busy wiping noses (and other stuff), taking them to sporting events, music lessons, school things, scout things, and etc that the daily cares of life kind of diminish our ability to see clearly.... and specifically - to see how lonely life is going to be without them some day. I have enjoyed each stage of my children's lives. I think I enjoy them even more now that they are all maturing so well and they are able to converse intelligently about things that matter to them - even very serious things. I am happy that they are becoming adults and able to take care of themselves. Yet, a part of me still longs for those sweet days of the past when me and three little people would flop on the couch on Lanesend Drive and watch some silly Disney or Nickelodeon show.

It all goes by so very quickly! I don't think any young parent (having been told this by an older parent) really understands this - or at least truly appreciates it's meaning and impact. However, someday they will.....

Well, a new week emerges from the sleepy haze of the weekend. I hope yours was restful for you and you too have your now defunct Xmas tree sitting outside for the next trash collection if you haven't done so already (I'm sure you have).

Kiss somebody you love. Tell them how important they are to you. Hug them and tell them how much they mean in your life. - Repeat, smile then repeat.... you get the idea.

My best to you for the coming week.... Jerry

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow....

Well, tonight we are getting a pretty good snow! Yes! By morning we may have somewhere between 4-9" depending on how it tracks. Yippee!

It's not one of our really big snows but hey, every snow is great. It looks nice coming down tonight and the crazy Shelties just love it. I turned them out an hour ago and they barked with glee as they bounded through the snow. They love it. However, they don't love the towel that greets them when they come inside (can't have wet doggies walking around the house!).

I even decided to put a picture of the snowfall on our web page so check out my WX (ham radio operator abbreviation for "weather") link on my web page.

Well, the Bejeweled competition continues between Sheila and Joy with some considerable ferocity. I was told this evening by my wife that she has established a new lead in the race for Bejeweled dominance. If you haven't played Bejeweled, check it out on the Internet. It's quite an addictive little game.

It's been a good week with the new project at work. The complexity of what we are attempting to do is a bit daunting but hey, it will be fun once we get all the facts together. Right now, it is a bit challenging to be sure we cover all the issues. Still, things are lookin good so far. It's going to be a busy period for the next few months.

Well, it's time for bed. I hope this weekend affords you (and me) some rest and perhaps the beauty of nature (if you are also lucky enough to get some snow). Sadly my weather station doesn't measure snow... I'll just have to work on that....... hmmm....

Goodnight and take care,

Jerry

Christmas past

Well, as the saying goes, all good things come to an end. That is sadly true of the winter holidays as well. As we have finally reached the end of my two college kids' vacation period, it was necessary to return them to college again.

Well, yesterday was truly a long day but I am thankful to God for the safe passage he afforded me and the kids. Sheila had to work, so I got them all packed up here (took till about 1:30 PM) and then unloaded and installed at their apartment again. Joy and I went grocery shopping too and we all had a few bites of pizza before I headed back home around 8:30 PM. That much of the day was long but uneventful. I would have been home around 11pm but for an apparently serious and bad wreck south of Gibson. They must have had every piece of emergency equipment out that they could muster. We were forced to make a perimeter loop around the accident scene; looping out about 5 miles around it. You could see it from the loop though. They had emergency vehicles all over the highway – covered about ½ mile of road I would guess. The end result is that I saw one ambulance going south from the accident scene with lights flashing after they first detoured me and then as we went around the detour loop, we had to stop three times for three other ambulances to go by. So, it must have been very serious. All the ambulances “appeared” to have people inside they were treating as evidenced by the lights being on inside and the technician working over someone. Very sobering indeed. It was raining and I attribute the accident to the wet roads although the road at that spot is quite straight. I hope those people fair ok following the incident. I have often thought of this possibility many times myself. I usually say several prayers along the route that God will keep me and the people coming at me at a closing speed of 110-120 mph….. safe. A sobering thought as well.

Even though Christmas is now well and truly behind us and tax time approaches, it was a good holiday and I enjoyed our time together. I look forward to the summer when hopefully the kids will return although Mark may be going off to his new vocation then. Guess we will see what the future brings.

So, today, it is back to school for all my kids - their usual state and back to work for me. I am enjoying the new project but we are in the daunting startup phase of the project so it is going to take a bit to get things under control well enough that we can proceed forward with the work. That's kind of the normal state of things. The initial phase is quite difficult in that you want to be sure you have captured all the requirements for the work before you begin the work. Hopefully we will be done with that very shortly.

My weather station continues to update regularly and is a source of much amusement and enjoyment. I have it updating our web page daily now (including rainfall measurements) and it mails the data to me at work periodically too. It has been a lot of fun.

Well, gotta get to work and start the new week. All my best to all of you and I hope you have a good week too!

Jerry

More fun with the Weather Station

Well, today I got the rain gauge mounted on the fence and connected to the remote unit of my new weather station. So, I am now able to receive rain data too. This is really fun. I now have the weather station doing the following:
1) updates my web page every 5 minutes (via ftp)
2) sends an email to my work email address on the hour showing the current weather
3) emails out my weather data to my friend Peter at 6 a.m. every day - who travels from Indiana every day to work and therefore it is handy for him to know what kind of weather he is driving "into"
Great fun with a Christmas present!

Today was a good day - I was off work because of my son and we got some good results. Mark had some tests at the outpatient clinic and it all turned out good. So, that's a relief and something to be thankful to God for indeed. I love my son very deeply. It still hits me hard when he must endure the medical things that I have grown used to over the years. Yeah, I know he's an adult now and able to deal with stuff on his own but it never stops me from feeling like his father and that he might perhaps need me during times of stress. I guess that's the way it is with our children. We want to spare them all the less than pleasant things we have experienced along the bumpy road of life. Well, I'm glad that's over and I'm sure he will feel better tomorrow.

I was happy to get my emulator working at my vocation on Monday. It is a debug tool for solving problems with the software that runs in our CPU card. It had been giving me some trouble and so with some help from another engineer, we were able to get it to load the latest compiled code into the CPU for testing purposes. Now that it works, I am ready-to-go for development activity on the new project. Now all I need to do is read all the documents we have available to us so I can see what are the next steps to beginning this substantial feature.

We ordered pizza this evening and watched a couple of movies with the kids today including one called "The Village" by M. Night Shyamalan - one of my more favorite movie producers. Nothing too very horrible ever happens in his movies and they always have a substantial surprise buried in them. Things are rarely what they appear in his movies. He seems like a very likeable young guy with a great vision for cinemetography. Anyway, if you haven't seen The Village - check it out at your local video rental store.

It's back to work tomorrow but I have much to do so that's good.

Thinking about all the family members who are in need of prayers lately and God's support and thankful my son is ok. Those things will surely be in my prayers as I end my day with a little Bible reading.

May God look after all of you. Goodnight and all my love,

Jerry

Ok, long time no blog....

Well, it's been a long time since I commented on my blog - the 23rd to be exact. I'm back.

I had a great Xmas with the kids. They are with us a few more days before school starts back up again. I hate to see the end of the holidays. I look forward to it all year, anticipate it with great joy and dread the return to work and loss of my kids to the school systems again. Thus is life though.

Xmas was nice. I received a new weather station (in amateur radio, the abbreviation for weather is "wx"). I put it up pretty quickly after receiving it and I now have a PC interface that allows the weather to be transferred over to my PC from the weather station. It is wireless and communicates to the "outside pieces" over RF. I have really enjoyed it. It seems that it tracks the local airport weather very accurately.

If you want to see what our weather looks like at any given time, just go to our family web page and take a look - I added a screen there that updates every 5 minutes via my weather station. I hope you enjoy it.

New Years was fun. We gathered at Don Jr's and all the kids exchanged gifts and we opened our packages from the Lemleys Sr. We even got to talk to them a bit on video camera - ah - ain't technology great! It was really nice to feel a bit closer since they could not come here due to health concerns.

It was great to see WV win the Sugar Bowl - first time they had ever won the Sugar Bowl. Great effort and smart football play all through the game lead them to a great victory over the gators. Well done, WV!

We have seen many good movies this holiday season including "Harry Potter and the whatever it was", Narnia, King Kong (well it was fairly good - impressive in terms of what they can do but very gory), Fun with Dick and Jane (a remake of an old Jane Fonda/George Segal vehicle that was very funny back in the day) and tonight we saw Pride and Prejudice - an excellent movie if you are into "chick flicks" - aka lots of love, lots of crying, lots of romance, lots of emotion. It was really good and well acted. One of the impressive things about the "period" in which this took place was the respect with which men and women greeted each other and with which they conducted themselves in conversation - it was refreshing given the casual and sloppy (even familiar) behavior that occurs between them today when they barely even know one another. We could benefit from a little less familiarity or assumption and a little more polite respect.

Well, gotta turn in for the night. I hope this night finds you peacefully resting in bed and looking forward to the new year. Happy New Year to all of you and may you be healthy and happy all year.

Love - Jerry