I picked up Becky from DFW last night at about 11:30. She's got 332 pictures of Germany for us to sift through. I'll try to get some of those up her so you can see them. Right now...I'm tired. I'll get everyone caught up with my anniversary suprise antics (which were very well received) as well.

As Jenkies's internship comes to a close, I also am reaching the end of a similar episode. Becky returns from Germany on Monday night. I share some of Jason's feelings with regard to the end of the duration. It's been a tough, lonely time during which it felt like I was in a new place where I didn't quite fit in. For me it feels like a part of me has been missing. In many ways, it's been an enlightening experience after which I feel like I know myself better. Of course, I didn't meet anyone with bullet holes, and I don't have to preach on Sunday. It's not even my turn to teach Sunday School this week.

It really makes me appreciate Becky that much more to see what my life would be like without her. For one thing, I can just barely make it out of bed on my own. The many years of training that Peter and I went through to sleep late and through anything have honed my sleeping skills to the point that it just about takes a freight train to wake me up enough to actually get up. I've been late several times in the last few weeks because of it. It's a million little different things that you don't notice until they're gone. I'm glad she's coming back soon.

She's taken lots of pictures, so maybe I'll post a few of the better ones. We got a 256MB memory stick for the camera before she left. Combined with the 64MB stick we already had, she's got enough room for well over 300 pictures of Germany. And if you come visit, we'll make you watch every single one...Just kidding.

That reminds me...You guys have an open invitation to visit us in Austin. Well, not just anyone off the street. You know who you are. (not you, B-Dub. You can stay in your own dang house)

Say, that reminds me, B-Dub. It's you and Jan's turn to come up North for dinner when Becky gets back.

Well, I got ambitious and decided to replace a few of the more non-functioning of my sprinkler heads the other day. I identified a few, and began to dig the first one up. The western side of my house doesn't drain very well, and as a result the dirt stays rather moist after a rain. Over the years, the roots have permeated (Jeff, usage?) the ground and made it almost like peat (not Pete). This made it very difficult to dig through. So, I pulled out the ole pick-axe. My system is about 20 years old, and is constructed rather bizarrely. They use what I would call a "curly-que" of elbow joints to couple the head to the pipe, presumably to reduce the torque on the main PVC pipe delivering the water. This particular head had a much more elaborate structure coupling it to the pipe in such a way that the "curly-que" reached much higher toward the surface. Not realizing this, I hacked it with the pick-axe, and now have a neat little fountain.

So, today I went to the brand new Lowe's down the street (across 35 from the soon to be opened Ultimate Electronics, Toys 'R Us, Ross, Chili's, Johnny Carino's, etc...Take that B-Dub!) and picked up some PVC weld. This stuff is pretty cool. You fill the crack, than "activate" it with heat. You're supposed to use a blow torch, but I don't have one, so I used a lighter...It took a while.

While I was heating it, the ground caught on fire (remember the peat-like roots). This was really a bizarre sight. It finally went out when it got to the place where the roots went under the dirt, because most dirt isn't flammable...thank goodness. Anyway, I let it cure for a while and then fired up the sprinkler. I hadn't sealed it all.

So now I have to wait until it dries out before I can do anything else.

Well, that one's somewhat anti-climactic, but I'll submit it anyway...for the sake of community!

I thought this would be an interesting venue for logging my video ideas and getting feedback on them from some of the people whose feedback I need the most...insensitive jerks. Just kidding. Here's one I thought of this morning. Kind of an excuse for a very action/stunt oriented short, so I can get sued by the parents of some of the youth who'd be my actors.

It's a spoof of the Matrix called "The Metrics" (or something like that). The world is not as it seems. Even though we use English system units, everything underneath is run on the metric system. Anyway, you get the idea. Agents, super-powers for some reason, etc. Maybe it's only funny to me. I'm prepared to accept that. I deal with alot of metric system vs. english system crap.

I've got some more of these. Expect to see more in the next few days.

You may be wondering why I'm being particularly quiet. I my readers will recall, Becky is out of town...still. Our anniversary was last Thursday, so I've been getting a few surprises ready for her return. I'm very excited about them, but, on the off chance that she should stumble onto my web log while in Germany, I will not mention them. I'll relay her reactions to you when she gets back.

Andrew and Sara came up yesterday evening. We played some ping pong and went to Red Lobster. For those of you wondering...yes, he can still beat me in ping pong. I usually lead until we tie up at 12, then he leads until about 21-19. I rationalize it by saying that I win the first half of the game.

I successfully fixed my broken sprinkler head. Today, I went through a full diagnostic of the system and targeted a few more heads to replace, as weel as an entire zone in the back that doesn't turn on. Not having a map of the pipe and valve locations will make that one a little difficult to fix. I'd say the whole thing's in pretty good shape for being 20 years old.

Yesterday was the "Grand Openning" of the Super Target openning in North Austin. My friend Jen (Dave's wife) works there and knew they were having fireworks to celebrate the openning. She and Dave invited me to come watch them. Many of you know I cannot pass up such a mixture of technology, fire, loud noises, and bright colors. Jen picked us a spot that was VERY close to where they were being shot from. I had assumed it would be a few rockets and mortar shells and it would be over....I was wrong. It turned out to be a show rivalling many of the 4th of July shows I have seen over the years. And being so close made it even better. It lasted for a long time, and the finale was absolutely deafening. We were so close that the fireworks filled practically the whole sky and made you feel as if you had ascended into the sky and were right there with them. It was really cool.

Hey hey! remember me? The last few weeks have been some of the busiest of my life. Sorry for the prolonged absence. I've got to fill you in on several things, so to be efficient in helping you through them, I'll start with a list:

• I've been working on a skit/video for out church's youth-led worhsip
• Becky got her french horn "renovated" for lack of a better term.
• Becky is in Germany for three weeks
• My sprinkler system broke.

Josh (our interim youth guy, who is younger than Andrew) asked me to get some volunteers and come up with a skit for the youth led service that was this Sunday. So, it put together a sign-up sheet. I added an extra category for favorite Brady Bunch episode like Peter and I did in Cal II, which just confused people. They thought I wanted to do a Brady Bunch skit. Peter's probably the only one who understands that so I'll move on. So, as usual, I procrastinated until I thought we had just enough time to put it together and do it, at which point I found out I'd lose an entire week to the youth mission trip. Josh gave me a skit book, which should have been titled "Worst Skits Ever" and written by Webdell. (just kidding)

Anyway, it came down to last Wednesday, when we were going to finish filming our outdoor scenes. Why didn't I guess that that's when the hurricane would blow through. So, we went down to Wal-Mart and bought 12 sheets of that bright green posterboard and did all the scenes in front of a green screen. Needless to say, this added quite a bit of editing time. To make a long story short, I was up until 6am Sunday morning working on it. What I came up with was very similar to Blue's Clues, so I wished I had B-Dub to play the main part. I'll try to make some screen shots later if you're interested.

Ok, that was way too much, I'll try to keep my other points shorter. In fact, I'll combine the next two.

Becky is in Germany right now doing something called "EuroBrass". It's a christian group that tours the Germany area doing concerts and stuff and encouraging the German-based churches in their work. Since Becky is starting grad school in the fall doing horn performance, she's been wanting to get a new horn. (Don't worry the stories will converge). She did alot of research and tried out several horns. Her friend Janet (who is also in the EuroBrass thing) has a friend in Dallas who does custom horn stuff. He looked at her horn and gave her an estimate of the work that needed to be done and what he'd charge for it. We'd essentially get a new horn worth much more than we'd pay to have the work done, and we could sell it in the future to get a brand new one. Anyway, we wanted to get it taken care of before she left for Germany so she'd be used to it when she came back and had to do auditions for ensembles at UT. The guy did awesome work and the horn turned out very nice. So now she's in Germany with her "new" horn.

She has a horrible fear of flying, so she got some medication to take on the plane to help with anxiety. It must have worked really well because she said the flight was good.

I'm starting to think I should have broken this up into multiple entries. Oh well.

I had noticed that zone 1 of my sprinkler system wasn't spraying with quite the pressure it used to , so I turned it on this evening to have a look. When I did, up from the ground came a-bubblin' crude...water that is...clear gold...Texas tea...ingredient. One of the heads had broken off the main pipe and the water had created a tunnel to the surface. I dug it up and found that a large root had been pushing on the head and had finally forced it to pull away from the pipe. I got in there with my axe and chopped out a section of the root, which turned out to be about 6" in diameter. When I pulled the root out, the head came with it. The root has grown around the head so I couldn't even pry it out. The threads on the pipe seem intact, so hopefully I can buy a new head tomorrow and fill the hole back up. If there's more damage, there'll be more work for me.

Well, hopefully that brings everyone back up to speed. Our anniversary is this Thursday, so we'll miss it once again due to Becky being on a mission trip. Man, her priorities are screwed up.

I found a really cool logging component today in my search for...a logging component. It's a port of the very popular and useful log4j logging component for Java. It's called log4net oddly enough. It's very well executed, making ingenius use of static members to create more of a logging "environment" than a simple logging component. It's completely configurable on the fly for named hierachy as well as logging levels.

Some of you may ask, "Why do you need a logging component with all the trace functionality built into the framework?" Well, you've got alot of nerve, mister! You'll be happy to know that log4net makes excellent use of these built-in features, as well as adding a whole slew of extensible options. Just go check it out and I'll shut up. It's also licensed with the Apache license so there's no worries about paying anyone for use in a commercial application.

While I'm on a soapbox about delicious open-source/free tools for the CLR, I'll also mention the following tools I use at work:

• NAnt - An open-source build tool based on Java's Ant. I use it exclusively at work since no one will pony up the dough for Visual Studio. I've found I have much more control over my builds.
• NDoc - An amazing documentation creator that uses the xml files created when building with the /doc switch on the C# compiler. The documentation comes out looking just like the framework documentation.
• NUnit - A unit testing framework that was originally based on Java's jUnit, but completely rewritten to take advantage of the CLR's marvelous features.